Premonitions
by jones2000
Summary: AU. Last in the Cursed series. The storm is no longer coming, it has arrived. Demons and angels are gearing for war. But Lilith is worried. The Black Eden is rising, someone she had though she had left behind herself a long time ago…
1. Madmen

**AN- As an Australian girl with only free-to-air TV, I haven't seen any new episodes yet (I haven't even heard any news about when they'll be airing over here). I'm incorporating some changes (guess who cameos here), but the storyline is now officially AU.**

**If you're reading this and you haven't read any of my previous stories, you should know beforehand: _Dean spent seven years in Hell – instead of four months. No angelic intervention – he was allowed to escape, with the original intent to kill Sam on the orders of Lilith._**

**And so as Season Four begins, the _Cursed_ series ends…**

* * *

The corpse was starting to smell.

That would do no good, especially as it was her turn to host the book club on Thursday. And so she decided to load him into the car and dump him.

She didn't even remember who he was now. Some random college geek that made a pass at her in the bar. She remembered the incredulous and amazed look on his face when she had suggested that they go back to her place.

He should have known that nothing was ever that easy.

A nice stretch of deserted road. Perfect. Pull over, manhandle the body out and drop him over the bridge. Simple as that. She didn't have to worry about fingerprints, as she didn't have any. She didn't have to worry about leaving DNA, as she didn't really have any of that, either.

At least not any that the meagre level of human technology was capable of picking up. When the cops found the body in the morning, there would be nothing linking her back to the withered husk found in the river. She would move on. Another town. Another hapless male.

_Fools. _She was feeling exhilarated. High. Since she was little a hunt could make her feel all tingly. It was almost like some kind of drug. The looks on their faces when they finally, _finally_ realised what she was doing to them. The fear. And the power it gave.

The power.

"Nice night for it."

She gasped aloud. She hadn't heard him. She hadn't seen him. It was like he had appeared from nowhere.

And there was no possible way he could have missed seeing what she was doing. Human!

No. Something darker. She could smell it now. All over him. A predator in the dark.

Waiting.

The lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl and slowly she turned to face him. Ribbons of grey wove back through his dark hair and the expression he wore was vaguely amused, like the world was his plaything and he enjoyed smashing it to the floor.

"Hello." He said, seemingly oblivious to the hostility she was giving off in waves.

"What do _you _want?" She didn't know who he was, personally, but that hardly mattered. They were all mostly the same anyway.

"Ouch. Is it a crime to want to introduce myself to my brothers-in-arms when I come across them in the dead of night? _The dead of night._ A rather nice turn of phrase, don't you think?"

He wished to make small talk? Long ago, in her Hell time, demons drank the blood of their enemies and reaped the souls of the wicked.

_Where were those great warriors now?_

"I do rather like the way they refer to this hour as the Witching Hour." She finally said. "Rather quaint and homey."

"And all their misconceptions about Fridays and thirteens."

"And black cats."

He was really quite good-looking, she supposed. Or at least, his flesh-suit was. It was always difficult to see the true shape underneath. At times you could see, though, this great big _thing_ twisting and turning and convulsing just beneath the skin, yearning to break free.

Yearning to _fly_, and remind the world of those who were once their masters, and would be again.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"I am what was, what is, and what will be. I am the bliss of ignorance and the despair of truth." He said, spinning his words skilfully. And yet there was a genuine ring to it, right down in the pit where her soul once was. "I am the lies that people tell themselves to get through the night."

They all did that! It got so incredibly annoying after a while. _Hey, baby, I'm so _bad_ you wouldn't believe it._ _Whatcha think about_ that?

She smiled. In delight. In madness. She knew it was true when the dreams began, broken, disjoined images weaving their way through her mind's eye. She saw that the Princes of Hell had no other choice but to challenge the bitch that would be Queen.

There was worry etched on his face. Worry that she delighted in. He was afraid.

"The Black Eden is stirring." He said.

Some said that the Black Eden was the first true demon to be born of the fire and darkness. Yet more said that he was the Left Hand of the Devil. "_You _can feel it."

She knew then, why he had come to seek her out. Even his black arts would not let him peer through the looking glass into what would be tomorrow. _She knew more of what was coming than he did._

_Oh, what fun_, she thought delightedly.

"Our Saviour." She simpered. "He who perished for us only to be born again. He's coming home again, and He will make this place His own once more."

He looked at her. His stare was hard and piercing. "Eve Potter."

She hardly heard the human name she had chosen for herself so long ago. Names were meaningless to her now. Merely sounds they made to tell each other apart in the melee.

"You will tell me what I want to know."

"So you can destroy Him when He awakes?" Her smile was dreamy. "No, His return was written of, so long ago. It is destiny. Who are you to tell Destiny what it should be?"

"Listen to me, you stupid bitch. This world is going to _burn_."

"Pretty, pretty. Flicker in the night. The Black Eden rises. He is already here, waiting for that what was lost to be found again."

He scowled dangerously at her. She seemed unconcerned that he might lunge for her at any moment. He hated that he had been reduced to this. To seek her counsel.

Yet she knew things that he did not. He did not understand it, and did not want to understand. There were so few of her kind left, twisted, empty shells of creatures that somehow saw beyond, tore past the restraints placed on them. Saw the riddles and puzzles of what was yet to come. He needed her. And yet…

_Whatever she had seen in the future had driven her insane._

"Where is Sam Winchester?"

She smiled a shifty little smile. "Now that would be telling." She whispered. Smiling, she stepped back into the darkness, knowing that he would not attack her, knowing that he would not follow her.

_Weak. They are all weak._

"The storm is coming." He called out to her. "And you will be among the first to die."

"The storm is coming?" Eve laughed, a tinkling of broken glass. "Look around you."

And so he did.

He saw the lone tree on the street corner.

And a word.

One word.

One he knew well.

_Croatoan. _

"Look at them all, sweet little things!" Eve shrieked out. "Look!"

A lamppost, a row of power poles running down the street, buildings, signs, posters, and that one word, over and over.

Croatoan.

He stared around himself, shocked into silence. _How did I miss this? How?!_

And suddenly the madwoman was back. She peered up into his eyes, adoration on her face. "You know what it means." She reached up to whisper in his ear. "And deep in your black heart, you are afraid. The ways of your kind have been turned back against you, and he is coming."

Eve stepped back, and twirled on the spot. "Can't you hear the voices? They're getting louder all the time, louder and louder."

He took a step forward. "Listen to me."

"No. _You_ listen to _me_." Her voice was a crack of lightning in the dark. The smile on her face was sweet and serene, and somehow horribly, terribly deadly.

"The storm _has _come. It _is_ here. It _has_ already started. You're too late."

That was when she spun around to the other man standing behind them, watching calmly, serenely. The one with his neatly combed hair, pressed shirt, and sparkling blue eyes.

"You're both far too late." She told him, the one with the angelic face. "And we shall all burn together."

* * *

The Black Eden. Lilith knew of the Black Eden. Knew what it meant.

The world as it was would fall into the pits of Hell.

And finally after all these long years, he was coming back to her.

She dreaded the prospect.

Why? Were they to be irrevocably drawn together like this for an eternity? Perhaps longer? He and she, two sides of the same coin, the reflection in the mirror. Her true other half. Of course, there had been others along the way, but for some damned reason, they kept coming back to each other.

Lilith remembered how once the two of them had set the Old World on fire. She remembered all they had shared, all they had fought for. She remembered how he had believed in her, in her visions for the future when all others ridiculed her.

And she remembered how she had ripped him asunder when he had challenged her, challenged her authority and her power, before banishing him to the world of endless nightmares.

But he had been reborn. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes. He would kill her, and it would be her fault.

The storm around her crackled and raged. He was coming. Coming home. Coming for _her._

He would seize her power.

He would stop her plan.

He must_ die._

The storm broke on the horizon as Lilith looked up. There was a smile on her face. "Come to me." She whispered. There was a mad glint in her eye as she tempted the Fates to throw all they had at her. Her emotions were an insane jumble of searing hatred, lust, and irrational joy.

Home! He was coming home to her!

"Come to me, my Samael."


	2. Coincidence

He was a married history professor with three kids, a dog and a house with a white picket fence out front. The epitome of normal.

He was also a demon. Not so normal.

"You know it'd save us a whole lotta trouble if you just got out of him." Jo Harvelle said, slowly walking in a circle around the chair.

"And make it easy for you? Hell, no." He peered up at her hatefully, white-hot fury in his black, soulless eyes. Jo shrugged. The demon could have left the victim voluntarily or involuntarily, but he was still on a one-way ticket back to Hell.

"Have it your way, then." She said. "_Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum tuum, et clementiam tuam supplex exposco_-"

The chair the professor was on was beginning to shake, and the professor's face grew pale and pinched, like he was trying to keep from screaming. Jo could only guess at what the pain would be like when you were being forcibly torn from someone's body and being tossed back down the pit.

"_Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omni incursio adversarii-_"

Little wisps of smoke were now starting to form around his head, and she could tell by the way he tried to flinch away from her words that it would be over soon. She'd be able to get home early.

"_Reus es Filio ejus Jesu Christo Domino nostro-"_

"Bitch!" He cried out with all the hatred as he could muster, and stared at Jo with those cold, dead eyes. "Whore. When He rises again, you will be among the first to die. He will reduce your world to ashes!"

She ploughed on relentlessly, ignoring him. Every time. Since she was a relatively harmless looking blonde woman, they thought they could psyche her out each and every time by throwing out a few random sentences. Bastards.

"The Black Eden is rising."

That caused Jo to pause, mid-exorcism. Her mother always said that curiosity was her greatest downfall.

"What's that?" She asked, staring at him through eyes narrowed to slits. The demon was staring down at the floor, shuddering, trying to regain some semblance of control. Jo wasn't overly worried. She still held all the cards.

"He'll kill you all. He will let you _watch_ as He pulls out your insides."

"Who's _he_?"

"There's no need to shout." The professor's head lolled back against the hard wooden chair as though he was watching a show on the TV. "I can hear you."

"Who is he?" Jo repeated again flatly. Emotionlessly, she empted some of her flask of Holy water across the professor's face. He screamed.

"The one that died only to be born again." He gasped.

"What?" Jo asked harshly. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

The professor's lined face twisted into a hideous parody of a smirk. "You don't _know_?" It was half a smug statement and half an incredulous question. Suddenly the demon through his head back and laughed. "You don't know!" He crowed. "The signs. The signs are right there in front of you and you can't see them! This is too good!"

"Give me a name!" Jo demanded, empting more water over him. "Believe me, Doc, I can keep this up _all_ night."

The demon looked up at her, panting slightly. "You heard from the Winchesters lately?"

"What?"

He continued to smile at her in that demeaning way that all demons seemed to have. "Mommy and Daddy didn't want this for you." He finally whispered. Jo had to lean forward slightly to hear what he said to her.

"Look at you. Broken. A shell. All innocence lost long ago because of the darkness. Mommy and Daddy wanted to protect you from the dark places of the world, so you could become a daughter they would be proud of."

"Shut up."

"Ever wonder why Ellen doesn't phone anymore? She's given up on you. She tried, but at the end of the day you were such a _waste_. A huge, useless, waste of life."

"Shut _up_!"

"That's right, let it out." He grinned. "Let that anger out! Let's hear that hatred! Tell me, sweetie, do you still ask yourself at night whether you're doing the right thing?"

Jo's lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. She empted the last of the Holy water over the demon, causing him to screech out. "Tell me, demon, do you still hide in the shadows hoping no one like me finds you? Are you still too gutless to take a stand and fight back? Hiding behind an innocent old man hoping you can go unnoticed for just a little bit longer?"

"Bitch." He snarled at her once more.

"You better believe it." Jo smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

* * *

She saw that Mom's car was parked around the side of Bobby Singer's house as she pulled up. Briefly she wondered who was watching the bar, but dismissed the notion as she climbed out of the car and walked up to the front door. She raised her fist and hesitated, still not entirely sure of what she was going to say, let alone do.

_Hey, Bobby, listen, the other day I exorcised this demon and he said some guy was coming for us hunters. He didn't mention a name or anything but said something about a Black Eden, oh and by the way, have you heard from Sam and Dean lately? What, no reason. Just curious. _

Yeah. That'd work.

Swallowing her doubts, she finally banged on the door. This was insane, the way Sam and Dean had been tied to everything they did, every demon they dusted. Their lives were so interwoven with Hell and destiny, but no one ever seemed to know why.

Or at least, if they knew, the Winchesters weren't telling.

The door creaked open, and a grizzled Bobby was standing in front of her. Even though he had been in the house most of the day, he was still wearing his trucker cap. Jo wondered whether he ever took it off.

"Hey." She said.

"Hey." He replied. "Whatcha doing here, girl? Weren't you supposed to be two states away chasing some professor?"

She didn't even bother asking how he knew. He wouldn't tell her unless it was important. "Done and done." Jo replied. "I just got something I wanna check up on, need to look in some books. You mind?"

"Jeez, you could have phoned first."

"It's harder to tell someone to get lost when they're standing on your doorstep."

His face broke into a wry grin. "You got your daddy's gift for dealing with people, that's for sure." He said, holding the door open for her. "Beer?"

Jo knew that it probably wasn't a very good idea to refuse. "Yeah, why not?" She looked around herself as Bobby rummaged around for a couple of bottles. There were books stacked every place they could have been stacked, in no particular order that she could see, though Bobby probably had a pretty good handle on things. How she was supposed to find something when she didn't even really know what she was looking for in the first place was beyond her.

"Where's Mom?" She asked, as Bobby came back and handed her a bottle. "I saw her car coming in."

"Asked me to do some bodywork repairs." The man replied gruffly. "Went on a damn hunt backing up one of the guys from the Bar, werewolf jumped on the hood of the car, mangled it pretty good."

She licked her lips. "Has this beer been watered down?"

Jo didn't miss how Bobby's eyes flashed over her, gauging her reaction. "So what you looking for?"

She shook her head. "The thing is, I don't know. Not really. This demon I did, he said that someone was coming."

"Someone? Who's someone?" The older man's curiosity perked straight away.

"That's the sticking point, he didn't give me a name." Jo said. "All he kept saying was that 'He is coming', with emphasis. So I'm pretty sure that the guy ain't too friendly."

"Was that all?"

"No. He said that the Black Eden was rising."

The old man's brows knitted together in thought. "Black Eden." He said, scouring his memory. Ever since his wife had died, he had studied every book that had been ever written on the occult and helping as many people as he could hoping he could find some sort of redemption. He was the go-to guy for random facts and obscure information. But-

"Don't think I've ever heard of that one before. Could be a band or something."

"Why would someone who's getting sent back to Hell use his last breath to announce a band comeback tour?" Jo asked sceptically.

"Don't sass me, kid. I don't like being sassed." He frowned at her, but the young woman wasn't looking at him. She was staring in front of her distractedly, as if trying to put together the pieces of a particularly nasty puzzle. Her expression was grim and soured, like she didn't like the conclusion she had arrived at.

"But there's a but?" Bobby guessed.

"It asked me if I knew where the Winchesters were. Not just Sam, like you'd expect. The two of them, plural." Jo finally met his eyes. "I would have called them myself, but they've changed their numbers. There's something bad going down, Bobby."

"You don't know for sure. Could be just a demon's way of trying to rock you."

"Me specifically?" She said in a deadpan sort of voice. "That's kind of what I thought, but-" She pulled a crumpled newspaper clipping from her pocket. She'd torn it out of some dude's newspaper he hadn't collected off the porch, and the paper had been practically burning a hole in her pocket the whole ride here. Bobby took the paper and smoothed it out across his palm.

"_Mass disappearance from Oak Lodge, Wisconsin._"

"Yeah." Jo said. "Only a small place. Hardly a spec on the map. Population of three thousand. And they're all gone."

"You checked it out?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

Jo flipped open her phone and brought up the photo.

_Croatoan. _

"Whatever's been coming," Jo said. "I think it's here. It's already started, only so small we hardly noticed." She lent forward. "I've been in contact with a few friends of mine over the past few weeks. The demons they've gone after, there's been something up with them."

"How do you mean?"

"_Weeell,_ demons are usually nasty-arrogant, right? But lately they've been more… scared-arrogant."

"How?"

"They… lately they've been acting like they've… got something bigger to worry about. Like we're just insects buzzing around their heads that they'll swat at occasionally but wont actually bother to waste the energy getting up to get the can of bug spray."

"Interesting metaphor."

"I'm not kidding, Bobby. They're running scared. AJ caught one around the Bar yesterday-"

"What, that sort-of boyfriend of yours?"

"-and the demon inside _actually _said something about the 'End of Days'." Jo said. "At first I was thinking, nuh, 'cause like we deal with stuff like that at least three times a fortnight-" She stopped mid-babble, and hyped herself down.

"I don't like the coincidence." She finished gravely.

Bobby looked her up and down. She had the same roundabout logic that her old man once had, and whenever Bill Harvelle was worried, generally there was a very good reason to be concerned. Wordlessly he reached for his phone and dialled Sam's number.

Of course those brothers would be in the smack-bang middle of things. That was just the way it seemed to go nowadays, and Bobby was very rarely surprised by it anymore.

"Apocalypse." He grumbled. "And it's another Monday in Gotham City."


	3. Echo

It was the same small-town church where John had finally married his lovely Mary. It was the tumbledown vicarage Bobby had gone to seek sanctuary and guidance after the death of his wife. It was the quaint rectory where Pastor Jim had preached to the faithful, the chapel where Ellen had escaped to when all she saw were the ghosts, and the cold, impersonal, white-walled cathedral where Sam had said his last goodbyes to the woman he loved.

They were all different. Yet they were all the same. Why the hell were they all the same?

Dean looked around the door. _Okay, this is new._

There was this feeling, this vibe he couldn't shake as he walked into the church. _You shouldn't be here._

The light illuminated the crucifix hanging above the alter. Dean had never been a particularly religious guy_._ He'd maybe walked into a handful of churches in his time, and most of them had been haunted and/or had other supernatural problems that called on his particular areas of expertise.

_I will fear no evil._

"Time is falling together. What was still plays a part in what is."

She was a pretty woman, draped in black cloth almost like a shroud. There was something familiar about her face. He had to stare at her a minute before he recognised her.

"Eve?" Dean asked curiously, recognising her face, and the unbalanced glint in her eye.

Eve Potter, or at least that was what she was calling herself at the time, was a succubus that he and his brother had encountered on a hunt several months ago and had been unable to kill. The demon developed a disturbing fixation on him, and there was a dangerous edge to her apparent insanity.

"Everything's eroding now, the tin soldiers all fall down."

"What?"

"Can't you feel it? The balance is breaking away, and the world is falling into darkness."

Dean slowly raised an eyebrow. "Could you say that again a little less Yoda-like?"

"There are no more choices." She said sternly. "There are no more places to run to avoid your fate. Or that of your brother."

"Sam?"

There was a noise behind him, sudden and loud. Slowly the church door swung inwards.

"Dean."

His brother was just standing there, his face in shadow. _Why?_

"Sammy?"

"You promised, Dean." Sam said, his voice strangely expressionless. "You promised us both."

"Promised what? You're going to have to give me a little more to work with here."

"You promised me and Dad that if you couldn't save me, you'd kill me."

An icy fist closed around his heart.

"Sam?"

And Sam stepped into the light.

"No," Dean stepped back. Sam's eyes, they sparkled…

A horribly familiar shade of yellow.

"You didn't save me." There was an almost accusing tone in his voice. "You wouldn't save me."

"I tried-"

"Stop saying that!" Sam snapped. "You're trying, you're always trying, but you never actually do anything more. You made me this, and now you are going back where you belong." He stretched out his hand, and Dean stared silently at the glow that began to gather around his fingers.

Fire.

All he could see were the red and black spots. He thought he had accepted the inevitable. That he was going to die. He thought he had moved on past the fear.

Only now did he really realise that he didn't want to die.

_Help me!_

"Never doubt that you tried you best." Another man, with a serene face and kind eyes. He knelt down beside Dean, who realised he was laid out flat on the floor. He couldn't see Sam. He couldn't see the church. Only the red and black spots.

"You fought well, but it is over now."

"It can't be over. I'm not ready. I've still got things to do. I have to fight."

"Others will carry on in your name."

"But I'm afraid." Dean whispered.

"Don't be." The man placed his palm on Dean's forehead and he felt his body grow limp, grow cold, his heartbeat sluggish until…

There was nothing.

"Angels are watching over you." Castiel stood tall, the fluidity of the shadows casting the suggestion of great wings flung out behind his back. "May God forgive us for what we are about to do."

* * *

The vibrating of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans jerked him awake. Disorientated, he stared around himself for a moment before realising that he was still in the crappy little motel room off the highway where the walls, carpets and furniture were all varying shades of beige.

Sam was still there, slumped on the lounge, newspapers and books spread out to either side of him. He too it seemed, had been rudely awakened by Dean's cell. The TV was still on, blaring out at the both of them.

_The damn phone was still ringing._

Instead of hurling it across the room like he was first inclined to, Dean tugged it out of his pocket and flipped it open. He didn't recognise the number.

"Hello?" He asked, his voice husky and dry.

"_It's Lawson." _The voice was small and tinny on the other end of the line.

Confusion. _Who the hell is that? _

"Lawson?"

_"You remember. New York, 1995. You and your dad…"_

Dean sat up. Memory forced it's way through his clouded mind. It was really quite painful.

_"So, I picked up this crossbow, and I hit that ugly sucker with a silver-tipped arrow, right in his heart. Sammy's waiting in the car and, uh, me and my Dad take the thing into the woods, burn it to a crisp. I'm sitting there and I'm looking into the fire, I'm thinking to myself... I'm sixteen years old. Kids my age are worried about pimples, prom dates... I'm seeing things they'll never even know. Never even dream of."_

Reggie Lawson. A year younger, and a lot scrawnier. Dean recalled a geeky kid with braces and glasses that for some reason wasn't scared off by Dean's take-it-or-leave-it attitude. The guy used to hang out with Dean during school. He was an army brat, he said, he knew what Dean was going through.

But then there was that accident.

Dean never sat with Lawson at lunch again.

_Oh dammit. _"How did you get this number?" He demanded. It's not like he didn't like the guy, but most people from his past seemed to want to kill him these days.

Lawson laughed. "_It's good to hear from you, too. I'm fine, thanks for asking."_

There was an awkward pause. Sometimes Dean thought his whole life was just a long series of awkward pauses.

"_How you been, D?"_

"Like hell."

"_Tell me about it."_

"What about you?"

"_Oh, man, living the dream." _

"Look, Lawson, I'm really busy at the moment-" On the TV, _LOST'_s Sawyer had somehow managed to loose his shirt again, before coming to an ad break where some barely-there teenager was spruiking on about the benefits of wrinkle cream.

"_Your idea of busy is a beer, slice of pie, and a couple of skin mags." _Lawson said. "_I have a problem."_

"Well, the first step is always admitting it to yourself." He replied seriously.

"_Ha. I'd forgotten that you liked to pretend you were funny."_

"That's me. Pretending to be funny." Dean said dryly. "What do you want?"

_"Can't I just call to catch up with an old buddy?"_

"Gee, what was the last thing you said to me? Oh yeah, something about if I came near you again, state homicide laws be damned?"

_"Come on, dude. You know I wasn't serious. Don't tell me you're still holding a grudge."_

"I like holding grudges. I'm good at holding grudges. They don't tell me I'm a wacko and then kick my ass out the door of a moving car." Suddenly all the childish resentments that he thought he buried when he became an adult were surfacing once more. "Dammit, that _hurt_."

_"I'm sorry, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I'm friggin' sorry."_ Lawson burst out. _"Look, we really need your help."_

"Who's 'we'?"

_"Echo 2/1."_

Dean felt the breath catch in his throat as he heard the name of John Winchester's old squad in the Marines.

_"Something's killing them, D. My dad said that you guys can help. Please."_


	4. Old Friends

Sam had asked Dean how this Lawson could have possibly known about Dad's old regiment. Wordlessly Dean flipped open Dad's journal to the back and pulled out a battered photograph.

"See that man there? That was Dad's commanding officer. His name is Dexter Lawson."

"Your friend's dad."

"Yeah."

"Dude, you okay?"

"Yeah, I guess." Sam sighed. "It's just-" He shook his head slightly. "I dunno. It's almost like every time I turn around I'm finding out something new about Dad. It's like I know more about him now he's dead than I ever did while he was alive, and I feel…"

"I know" Dean said gently. "Sometimes life's funny that way."

"Doesn't make it fair though."

"No, it doesn't."

There had been six of them serving under Sergeant Dexter Lawson. John Winchester left the regiment after his first tour of duty, but the others, Donnie Walsh, Walden Harris, Patrick Anderson, David Lewis, Reilly Berg and Dexter himself stayed on to become career soldiers, eventually being broken up and deployed to other regiments and technical support as they grew older.

But Echo 2/1 still bound them together. They'd go out for drinks, went to the other guys' weddings, and were uncles to each other's kids. Everything was good, until Donnie Walsh, known to the boys as The Don, put his standard-issue pistol in his mouth and fired.

Donnie never had any suicidal impulses while on active or advisory duty. His wife swore he had never suffered from depression, and the family wasn't enduring any of the situations that normally lead to suicide; they were financially secure, they owned their own house, there were no massive debts, the kids had all grown up and shipped out, and The Don himself had been promoted. In the next year he would have started at the Pentagon.

Laura Walsh, The Don's youngest daughter, was positive her father would not have taken his own life, but how could she tell her mother that she believed her dad had been murdered? And then Laura's sisters both lived too far away, and knew that their little sister was prone to exaggeration to tell a good story. Her own family wouldn't believe her.

So the woman went to the only man she felt she could confide her suspicions in. She went to her best friend and the guy she had dated for a while in college.

Reggie Lawson.

Lawson in turn confided in his father the Sarge, and Dexter, who had been just waiting for an opportunity to jump into action, called in a favour with the director of the NCIS.

What the NCIS found caused Lawson, a forensic scientist, to be assigned to the team investigating the death, and the Director personally called Dexter and Laura into her office, before bleakly explaining the situation to them.

And Dexter Lawson immediately thought of one man.

John Winchester.

Unfortunately through the Sarge's extended network of those associated with the military and those not so much, Dexter discovered that his old comrade, the one with a passion for things a little weird, a little off-kilter, had also passed.

He mourned, like you do, thinking of what his next course of action should be, when his son remembered something he didn't really want to.

Using the NCIS resources and the FBI database, which was incidentally highly illegal, Lawson utilised the network of speed cameras and telephone towers to zero in on an unsuspecting childhood friend, pinpointing the location of Dean Winchester.

And Sam went from being a little resentful of Reggie Lawson to wanting to sit down with the man and having a long chat. All this, from the possible murder of The Don, to Lawson's skilful tracking down of the Winchester brothers took place within a week. Sam was so impressed that for a moment he almost forgot to ask what the NCIS had found to reopen The Don's case.

"What did the NCIS find?"

Sergeant Dexter Lawson, a regal old man with white at his temples, folded his hands on the tabletop, glancing discreetly at his son. Lawson stood slightly off to one side, almost like he wasn't paying attention, but every so often Sam noticed his dark eyes flick over the brothers, scanning them, observing their mannerisms.

If he had all these databases at his fingertips, he undoubtedly knew what they said about Sam and Dean Winchester.

Sam was truly impressed. Dean just looked uncomfortable. From the moment the brothers had walked into the Lawson family house, Dean had been suspiciously quiet. He and Lawson, in the whole time the four of them had been in the same room together, had not exchanged words and had carefully avoided each other's eyes. There was a history there.

Sam couldn't remember what happened all those years ago. After all, he was only twelve at the time and had other things to worry about. Though he did recall Dad dropping Dean at this house many afternoons, and his big brother was so elated at getting out of there, away from the family for a while…

"No offence." Dexter said. "You pair seem like nice boys, but you're… boys."

_He thinks we're too young._ "Sir, you were eighteen when you started serving your country." Dean spoke up. In his eyes he showed Dexter a similar respect he had always showed Dad.

Dexter smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "So my son constantly reminds me." He said. "I suppose as we age we forget we were young when we too had first begun to save the world."

_Save the world._

The Sarge glanced at his son again, and Lawson disappeared for a moment. Dean could hear something being unlocked. Finally the other man emerged once more holding to his chest a file with no perceptible markings.

"This is classified information about an ongoing case. If anyone finds out I've shown this to you, let alone taken a copy out of the office, I'm going to jail for a very long time." Lawson said gravely.

"Who am I gonna tell? Me and Sammy, we're like the hermits of the highway." He opened the file. "It's not like we have any friends in the immediate metropolitan – yowser."

"Dean?"

Dean held up a rather good-quality copy of a crime scene photograph.

"Is that the ceiling?"

"You betcha." He replied ominously.

"Crap."

"Someone put the Evil Eye on the Don." Dean said. "And I've been waiting my whole life to say a line like that."

* * *

Dexter appeared to live alone, so he was all too happy to let the brothers colonise his spare rooms and park the Impala on his back lawn, off the street. Lawson lived next door to his father with his wife and son, and it was the unbelievable good timing of Sam and Dean that allowed them to come across to engage in a family dinner.

"This is a friend of mine, Dean Winchester. And this is his brother, Sam." Lawson introduced at the table. "Be good." He said this to a boy about eight, his head full of blonde curls.

Garth, Lawson's stepson, looked at Dean for a moment, eyebrow raised. "Whatever." He finally replied. Mom and Dad looked at each other exasperatedly. Clearly the boy was at 'that' phase.

"This is Monty."

She was really a very beautiful woman.

"Hi."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am." Dean reached across the table and took her hand in his. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it.

"Now." Lawson said in a warning tone. Dean released Monty's hand and grinned, his eyes twinkling. Lawson rolled his eyes, and for a moment Sam saw the pair of teenagers that had gone off into their own little world when they were together, so long ago.

"I'm flattered." Monty said. Her sweet, lopsided smile was infectious, and Sam and Dexter found themselves grinning too. "I didn't think men kissed a woman's hand anymore. Very chivalrous."

"If I kissed something else, I think I'd be in trouble." Dean replied flippantly. "Besides, One must be on good terms with She Who Makes The Rules."

"Then One is wise." Monty replied, her hand resting on Lawson's leg under the table to reassure him that Dean's charm wouldn't work on her and her husband was the one she was going to bed with later. "Dean Winchester. We haven't met before, have we?" She asked. Lawson had to admit that the banter between his wife and his old friend had the twang of familiarity to it.

"I'm sure I would have remembered." He said smoothly.

"Probably not." She remarked sharply, and Dean backed down, not willing to open _that _can of worms, just in case. Then Monty's eyes lit up. "That's right!" She exclaimed. "Dean Winchester! We were in the same class in that reform school in New York."

Sam snorted as he remembered that summer. Dean's teachers in the public school had recommended the reform school to John Winchester as the perfect place for problem children.

Dean had to cringe as he recalled the swirlies and the wedgies and the being stuffed in the lockers and the other stuff that came with being sent to a school where you happened to be smarter and better looking and all the other kids were bigger and meaner than you were.

"You were the geeky kid up the back of the class with the bad hair and worse innuendos."

Suddenly in a moment of clarity, Dean remembered who she was.

"Ha! You're the one that flashed the teacher to get me out of detention." He flung back.

You know that old adage, _sweet sixteen and never been kissed_? Well, Monty was the girl that had broken him from his dry spell, and he would always be thankful to her for that. God, she was hot.

_And now she's someone else's wife. _

"Those were the days." She sighed.

"They were." Dean agreed, settling back in his chair. His eyes had gone misty, and Sam elbowed him in the side. "Anyway." He said. "Enough with the _Days Of Our Lives_. Can we eat?"

"Dig in."

Dean piled his plate high. After living off sub-standard food for most of his life, he felt like he was in heaven. Apparently Sam thought so too.

"This chicken is amazing, Monty." He enthused. His brother nodded in agreement, mouth full. Monty grinned, looking pleased with herself.

"Don't they eat where you're from?" Garth asked curiously. His grandfather threw him a glance.

"Don't be cheeky."

"At least someone here appreciates my cooking." Monty said pointedly to her son.

"You'd be surprised what we eat when the situation arises." Sam said absently. At Monty's look, he hurriedly corrected himself. "That didn't come out right. What I mean is-"

"Accept his apology, Monts. He can stutter on like this all night." Dean said.

"Thanks." His brother replied sourly.

And so dinner proceeded along similar lines. Sam and Lawson began a conversation across the table about computers and current investigative techniques. Monty and Dean proceeded to catch each other up on where their lives were at the moment, Dexter sat quietly observing everyone, and occasionally young Garth would dive-bomb into the conversation, throwing everybody off-topic.

Across the path in Dexter's house, where Sam and Dean had left their supplies, in the pocket of Dean's jacket his phone began to ring.

And ring.

Finally it diverted to voicemail.

"_Dean, it's Bobby. When you get this, call me. Something's going down."_


	5. Castiel

"Bobby?"

"Shh." He hissed. He motioned to at her to join him and angled the phone so they both could hear.

"_This is Dean. I'm going to be unreachable for a while. Call Bobby Singer on-"_

The old man hung up and the two hunters looked at each other. "Could be nothin'." Bobby said. "If he had time to record a message like that."

"Or it could be everything. It could mean that whatever this Black Eden is has got them already."

"Or it could be nothing." Bobby said once more, though his tone was highly dubious.

"Bobby, you've known those two for a hell of a lot longer than I have." Jo said. "How many times have they gotten in way over their heads on a hunt now? They aren't invincible, and neither of them can see it."

"Where are you going, girl?" Bobby demanded, still nursing his phone as she slipped into her jacket and went to the door.

"I'm getting sick of those two always ducking out on me." She answered gruffly. _I'll call you,_ all those years ago. _Damn you. _"I'm gonna find 'em. I'll keep you up to speed."

"Jo-" He looked concerned, but his concern was eclipsed by his annoyance. "You get back here. If they're on a hunt, you can't just storm in there."

"Duh. I'm not that stupid. I'll just track them for a bit, make sure they aren't in any trouble that they can't handle. I wont get involved if it's just a run-of-the-mill job." She looked at him, her eyes wide and innocent. "I swear I'm just going to take a look around."

"Your mother is going to kill me. Get back here right now!"

Jo ignored his commands. She turned back and waved to him.

"Beep me if the world ends."

"Joanna Beth Harvelle!"

_Sorry, old man. That doesn't work with me anymore._

For a moment she wished her dad was here. Dammit, those two brothers got into everything, didn't they? And her Mom thought _she_ was a handful. Honestly, she hated it.

She hated the way they could make her care about them after all the crap the pair of them had put her through.

Jo had just left a twenty-four hour diner and truckstop when her phone rang.

"Hello?"

"_It's me."_

"Babe, I told you not to call me when I'm at work." Jo said to her sometime-boyfriend, the elusive AJ.

AJ used to be an archaeologist back in the day. Doctor Jones, even. But then the death of his young son and the disintegration of that life caused him to fall in with the wrong crowd, stealing ancient artefacts to order.

But he was going straight, now. Helping in the good fight.

_Maybe I'll just check his phone later, anyway. Just as a precaution._

"_Jo, you still there?"_

"Why wouldn't I be? My life's just one long party."

AJ pulled in a deep breath, like he was already regretting what he must say to her, but he spat it out anyway_. "I want you to stop chasing the Winchesters."_ He said this in a firm yet tired voice, like he knew he had already lost the argument.

Jo's hands stiffened involuntarily. "Who told you?"

"_Bobby Singer."_

"That _dick_." Jo seethed. "Did you tell him I can look after myself now?"

"_He thinks this is dangerous. And I believe him."_

"I'm not a kid, mister. I can look after myself." Jo was affronted that even after all this time, everyone thought that she still needed to be locked up where she couldn't get hurt. "I don't _believe _I'm getting this from you now, especially after all _you've_ done."

"_And don't you think there's lots I'd give anything to take back?"_ He snapped back at her. _"Are you driving?"_

"So what if I am?"

AJ was silent for a minute, knowing she was getting stubborn because he wanted her to do something she deemed as selfish. _"You want to argue?"_ He asked. _"Turn around and come home and we'll have a proper knock-down, drag-out fight, how does that sound?"_ He hardly stopped to draw breath. _"You act this way around those two guys all the time, and that's cool, I know where you're coming from. They're your friends from a long time back, and that's not gonna change. I get that._

"_But Jo, because they're your friends, you subconsciously edit out their faults. I mean, everyone does it, but it also means that you stop looking at them objectively."_

"Are you saying I'm seeing Sam and Dean through rose-coloured glasses?" Jo asked incredulously. She _hated_ when he deconstructed her. She remembered when she complained to her mom about it and Ellen just laughed and said _welcome to the relationship._

"_Yes, and I'm jealous because you never seemed to use them on me."_ AJ replied dryly. _"You don't see them the way everybody else does. The way I do. They're dangerous, and you refuse to see that."_

"So you're an impartial witness?" Jo sneered.

"_I have lost too many people who were important to me over the last ten years, I wont lose you too."_ She could hear the anguish in his voice. _"Please, honey, this obsession of the Winchesters is going to kill you. Just come home, where it's safe."_

"You know I love you, right?"

"_Don't do that. It makes you sound like you're dying."_ He said. _"But listen, those two are a two-man band. No one knows what goes on inside their heads. Anyway, who needs friends that never phone, never write, and the only time they drop in for a beer is when the next apocalypse-type situation rolls around?"_

Jo smiled wanly. That was true. Everything he said was true. That's why she had denied it. She closed her eyes, and that fraction of a second was long enough for the Mack prime mover in the opposite lane to start drifting toward her car.

Her eyes snapped open and she dropped the phone. "Shit!" She yanked the steering wheel to the side, taking her car off the road. The truck missed her back bumper by inches, and she breathed a sigh of relief, before sanding on the brakes.

Unfortunately inertia continued to carry her forward into the trees.

The buzzing of the radio was erratic and fleeting. Dazedly, Jo pushed her hair back from her face. There was blood all over the steering wheel; her nose wasn't broken but it did bend to the wrong side of her face. Shakily she forced the driver's door open.

The truck that had forced her off the road had kept going.

"Bastard!" Jo screamed into the night. "Fucking asshole!"

Her phone was stuck underneath the brake pedal. The LCD screen had shattered and the battery fell out as soon as she picked it up.

"Friggin' fantastic." She swore once more.

"You know, a good lady shouldn't use that sort of language."

Jo whipped her head around so fast that she heard something crack.

The young girl was standing a little apart from her, looking deceptively innocent. She was wearing shorts and a t-shirt despite the chill in the air. "Hello, Joanna." She said in a chirpy voice, one that sent chills down Jo's spine. "Don't you know me?"

Jo took a tentative step forward, highly aware that the only weapon she had was the ruined mobile she was still clutching in her hand.

"Mary… Morgan?" She asked slowly.

She had met the eight-year-old last Christmas on a hunt. The little girl was being used as a tool by the spirit of one of the psychic kids, one that had degenerated so far that there was no other choice but to destroy her.

But Mary was safe. _She was supposed to be safe._

"Oh, you are silly." The little girl tittered. "Mary's gone away. I'm Lilith now."

_Lilith._

"You're thinking of running away, aren't you? Do you think you'll get far? I don't think so, but you'll still try, wont you?"

"What the hell do you want?" Jo rasped hoarsely.

"You know where he is." Lilith said sweetly. "Up here." She tapped the side of her head. "I want to know what you know."

"Where who is?" She suddenly felt very cold.

"He's hidden from me, and that's not very fair. They've hidden him from me, hidden him away."

"Who? Tell me who you're talking about!"

"You know." Lilith said in an ugly voice. She reached her hand forward. "This may hurt ever so much."

Jo closed her eyes.

"Stop!"

The voice was raspy and male and angry. Jo peered up at him. He was a tall man, with greying dark hair and a black suit. "Begone, whore."

Lilith visibly bristled. _Oh, hell, _Jo thought.

"Don't try to stop me." The female demon said, the baby talk dropping from her voice. "What I do now is to benefit us all. When he breaks through, he will cauterise this world. The gateway must be destroyed."

The other one shrugged. "It is no business of mine whether the Black Eden rises or not." He said. "I have nothing against Samael." He said this as though if the words were spoken aloud, they would become true. "It is only you, witch, that will burn."

"You are an incorrigible fool, Belial." Lilith hissed. "I _must _destroy the gateway, for all our sakes."

"You will? And how do you intend to do that when your little bird has flown?"

The human woman, Joanna Beth Harvelle, was gone. Lilith swore frightfully, some of the curses in long-forgotten tongues.

"Oh dearie me." Belial said.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Jo wasn't stupid. As the demons faced off against each other in some sort of ultimate slanging match, she sunk to the ground beside her trashed car and vanished behind the offending tree.

Moving faster than she thought she was capable of, she faulted a wooden fence and sprinted for the far-off treeline.

Once again she sunk to the ground.

_They'll find me soon._

Stay quiet and maybe they'll walk past you.

_They're going to tear. You. Apart._

It wasn't very heroic, but Jo did what she used to do all the time when she was a child. She curled into the smallest ball possible and prayed to anyone that was out there that the monsters wouldn't get her.

Tears forced themselves out of the corners of her eyes. _Please, please…_

A hand landed on her shoulder.

"Ah!" She almost jumped out of her skin.

"Be still, Joanna. They will not see you while you are with us."

The man was tall and handsome in an untouchable kind of way. As Jo met his eyes, she was almost overwhelmed by the feeling that she wasn't worthy, him in his spotless shirt and tie, and she in her ripped jeans and bloody tank. There was a feeling emanating from him that said he would not hurt her. Would not allow her to be hurt.

"Who are you?" She whispered.

"My name is Castiel." He said. "These are my companions, Sariel and Elijah."

Jo knew she should try to talk, but for some reason she couldn't get anything out.

"You are indeed lucky, young one." The one called Elijah said. "In mere moments we would have left this place. But Castiel happened to spot your plight."

Jo licked her dry lips. "Why?" She asked.

"And so it was the Good Samaritan that stopped for the wounded traveller on the road to Jericho." He said simply.

"Castiel, you have done your good deed for the day. Do not tell the mud woman more than she needs." Sariel had a sharp face, and cold, calculating eyes. "She knows our names and that is more than enough to endanger the mission."

_The mission?_

"Samael must be destroyed. No matter how long you continue to delay." Sariel said dangerously. Castiel's face did not betray his emotions, but the hand on Jo's shoulder stiffened.

"You talk about us being frivolous with our speech, and yet your own words fall like teardrops in the rain."

He helped her to her feet. Reluctantly Jo let go of Castiel's hand. He continued to look at her, as if he wasn't quite sure what she was, and she once again began to feel uncomfortable.

"Leave her! We must get to the gateway before he breaks through and the Black Eden comes!" Sariel commanded.

"It's cool." Jo said. _He must have had a major hard-on for all that Good Samaritan crap. _"I'll…" She looked back at her car. "Hitchhike or something."

"And run the risk of crossing paths with Belial and Lilith once more." Castiel said gravely. "She will come with us." He announced.

"Will she?" Jo raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. Sariel was even less enthusiastic.

"I am in command of this crusade!" He snapped. "The child of Adam will stay where she is!"

"And _I _am the guardian of this day." Castiel flung back. "This dark day where everything is to be destroyed or changed forever. As the sun rises, so I am the strongest of we three. And _I _say she comes with us."

"Who _are _you guys?" Jo questioned, eyes narrowed.

Elijah looked her squarely in the eyes, before answering.

"'_Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword'_."


	6. Fallen Angel

* * *

"Bobby? It's Jo. I have a name for you. Samael."

* * *

He was in the church again. That friggin' church, with all its ghosts and all the whispers.

"Now this is getting beyond a joke."

His words bounced back at him and Dean scowled. Behind him the door began to slowly open, and he tensed, knowing what was to come. He was prepared. It was his dream and he damn well was going to take control of it.

"Hello, Dean."

"Hey, Mrs Potter." He answered her. Eve stood before him, happy to the point of giddiness. Dean winced, and wondered whether he could imagine up a wooden stake or a crossbow. But instead he took a deep breath and looked at the problem rationally, normally not one of his fortes.

"Can you tell me what all this is about? This crazy dream with the church and stuff?"

"Yes."

For a moment Dean was speechless. "Wow. Really? 'Cause I kind of wasn't expecting an answer to that."

She smiled innocently, hands clasped behind her back. "There are more than just you inside your mind." She replied cryptically, and Dean swallowed hard, horrified.

"You're saying that there are other people messing around inside my head?" He demanded. "But that's impossible! I'm protected against possession."

"This isn't possession." Suddenly she was painfully close, and she arched herself up at him. "This is_ suggestion_." She whispered by his ear.

"Well then, I _suggest _you get out of my dream." He snarled at her. "Piss of back to wherever you came from and leave me the hell alone."

"Ooh, so big and bad." The succubus purred. "Puppy wants to play. I can play too."

Lightning flashes, and then Eve was gone. Dean found himself standing in the middle of someone's backyard, a huge and derelict manor house towering over him. A swing set was rocking lazily from side to side, and the once-glorious garden was overgrown with weeds.

"Welcome to my home."

The well-rounded, polished vowels. The accent. Dean knew who it was before he even turned around. She was sitting on one of the swings, slowly rocking backwards and forwards, her dark hair over her eyes.

"Of course, it was much nicer when there were still people living in it."

"Bela."

"I was Abby here." She said. "I hated being Abby, with the starving and the beatings and the rest. I was a little girl. How could my parents have done those things? They were supposed to protect me."

Despite himself, Dean felt himself feeling just a little sorry for the British hell-whore. "Bela." She looked up at him.

Her eyes were black.

"I am stuck here because this is my Hell." She said. "Do you remember your Hell?"

Dean closed his eyes against the monsters and the darkness. Turned his back on the horrors and forced them from his mind. "What are you trying to tell me?" He asked her. "What are you all trying to tell me?"

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." The Bela-demon said. Then she smiled.

"But what does that even _mean_?!" Dean demanded.

She stood. "Come with me."

Reluctantly he followed her to the back doors of the mansion, and slowly they creaked open. "Do you see?"

He squinted, craning his neck. "I don't see anything."

"Exactly." The Bela-demon said, then ferociously pushed him through the doors.

Swallowed by blackness.

_Through the rabbit hole, Alice! I think I see the March Hare and the Mad Hatter!_

The house was even bigger on the inside, dark and ominous. Air whistled around him, in and out, almost as if the very building was breathing.

_Get a grip._

"And tonight we're playing the demonic version of _This Is Your Life._" Dean muttered. "Who will be the special guest star to surprise our unwitting victim?" He opened the door to his right.

It swung out into nothing. There should have been a whole world beyond that door, but there was nothing. Only a vast wasteland, rubble heaped to the sky, the sickly sweet smell of decay in his nostrils. Dean stepped back inside Bela's house, a hand over his mouth and nose. "Good grief!"

Somewhere something roared. And not a little, ouch-I-stubbed-my-toe roar, a full blown bellow. From something very big. And probably very mean. And likely with very big teeth and claws. Mutant creatures scuttled across the ground, bloody meat dangling from their jaws.

One of them had a child's doll in its mouth.

"This is our Eden." Sam said. "This is our paradise. And you are not welcome."

Searing pain. Dean screamed.

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Bela said.

"Puppy wants to play." Eve jeered.

"We all thought you were strong enough to do it." Sam said, golden eyes burning right through his brother. "I guess we were wrong."

Then the other man was there, holding a flaming sword. Wings. The man had friggin' wings! _Castiel! I remember you. _Slowly he raised the sword above his head. "One life for the good of the many." He whispered. "Forgive me."

The blade came down…

…Dean snapped awake, almost falling out of bed. He was drenched in a cold sweat and he could hear his heart practically beating out of his chest. He willed himself to calm down, for his hands to stop shaking.

There was a knock on the door.

"What?" Dean snapped.

"Thought you'd like some caffeine." His little brother stuck his head around the door. Sammy Winchester, not demonic, not evil, just some guy with a serious case of bed head bearing two cups of coffee. "Dude, you okay?" He asked.

"Why wouldn't I be okay? Just another restful night of sleep."

Sam gave him a stern look, a look that clearly said he wasn't buying it.

"What?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Well, screaming, really. I could hear it right through the wall."

Dean stiffened. "What did you hear?"

"Um, you were talking about a Eden." Sam answered, confused. "A Black Eden? Is that some sort of band or something?"

Dean ignored his lame attempt at a joke. Sam cautiously entered the room, setting down a coffee on the chest of drawers. Too cautiously. "What else did I say?"

"You said-" Sam sighed, his expression pained. He took a breath and began again. "You said '_Sam, don't kill me'_."

The brothers were silent. "Thanks for the coffee." Dean finally said.

"No problem."

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's not talk about this, ever again."

Wordlessly Sam left the room. Dean dropped his head into his hands. It couldn't go on like this for much longer.

Finally emerging from the bedroom, he showered, shaved, and went down to join everyone for breakfast.

Garth was in his morning-before-school-and-I-haven't-done-homework rush while Monty was still in her dressing gown and Lawson was already up and ready in his dark suit, reading the paper. Dean spotted Sam standing a little impatiently in front of the waffle machine, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Dean helped himself to a little toast, and Lawson gravely informed him how he had organised a meeting with Laura Walsh, The Don's daughter, later in the day. And although he agreed he'd be sacrificing his job, he would get the Winchester brothers past security and into the crime scene, provided that they don't do anything to possibly hinder the investigation. After all, he was still a forensic scientist, and this was still his gig.

Sam and Dean were aware that they would have to be extremely careful not to step on anyone's toes here.

Laura was the only one currently based at the Walsh family home while the investigation was ongoing, as her mother had gone up the coast with one of her older sisters, but it was Laura herself that the brothers really wanted to talk to. Laura, the harmless young woman who had an overwhelming feeling that there had been foul play in her father's death.

She was waiting for them at her father's offices on the military college. Lawson had got the brothers past by claiming they were colleagues of his. "You must be Sam and Dean."

"Yes, ma'am. And you must be Laura."

"Dexter and Lawson told me about you."

"Never mind him. We're actually nice people." Dean said. He shook her hand. She appeared dainty, almost petite, with her mousy brown hair and high cheekbones, but her grip was firm. She was a Marine's daughter and it showed in her eyes.

Sam shook her hand and introduced himself as Dean cast an appraising eye across the college grounds.

"Your father taught here?"

"Sometimes. When he wasn't in Washington, DC." She said. "This is where they… found him."

That became apparent when Sam spotted the yellow crime tape and the men and women in dark jumpsuits with _NCIS _written across them. He knew it would be a potentially fatal gamble to try to fool the agents when every one of them were armed, but there really was no choice. The NCIS were looking for the human murderer of a marine; Sam and his brother were after something worse.

Lawson and Laura begged time away with the three field agents, allowing the Winchesters to sneak into Donnie Walsh's office.

Once inside the office, Sam immediately looked up to the ceiling. The evil eye inside the pyramid glared back down at him. Something about the symbol didn't sit right with him.

"Getting any divine insight, maestro?" Dean asked. He stood beside his brother and also stared up. "What's on your mind?"

"Well, for one, did you know there is actually no such thing as the evil eye?" Sam answered. "There are heaps of incantations and amulets and stuff you can use to 'ward off' the Evil Eye, but it doesn't actually exist."

"The evil eye?"

"No." Sam said. He pointed up. "_That_ is the All Seeing Eye."

"Wow." Dean paused. "What a terrible job."

"The All-seeing Eye has been a benevolent symbol for centuries."

"So how did it suddenly morph into the evil eye?"

"I'd say it was another present from the Catholic Church, like when they built their own holy spots on pagan hallowed ground and turned the pagan gods into devils." Sam said. "It just was adapted to the attitudes of the time. Like how the swastika was really once a symbol of harmony, but Hitler reversed the image and used it in the Nazi campaign in World War Two."

"Or like the inverted cross. The upside down pentagram." Dean added.

Sam noticed a foreign inscription along the three sides of the pyramid, and he quickly scribbled them down in his notebook. "Yes. I suppose it was viewed as turning these beliefs on their heads. The eye was never really evil, but it could focus power like a bifocal focuses the sun. Incorporating the Eye into your spellwork could, in theory, make you, um, perform better."

"Kind of like Viagra." Dean replied. "Hey, check this out." Sam looked down. Dean had abandoned his side and was looking about on the floor.

"What have you got?"

Dean rubbed some of the powdery substance on his fingers. "It's ash." He took out a little exhibit bag he had taken from Lawson's suitcase and swept a little inside.

"Maybe he had a smoke."

"I don't think so." Dean held up a charred fragment that he had found in the ash. It was a tooth.

Someone's gold tooth.

"Sammy," He said gravely. "These are human remains. I think someone was trying to use Donnie as a human sacrifice, only our Marine beat him to the punch."

"A human sacrifice for what?"

But Dean was already hauling back the large square of carpet on the floor. A horned beast inside an inverted pentagram glared back at him.

"Hell." He cussed quietly. "Someone's been messing around with some heavy mojo."

* * *

"_I've found references that call Samael both the 'tempting angel' and the 'dark angel of death'." _

"So he's an _angel_?"

"_If you go by the lore, he's pretty much the prototype of every fallen angel story since Man fell out of the trees. I've found documents stating that this guy was the one that tempted__ Lucifer__ and caused him to be banished from the Heavenly Host."_ Bobby replied_. _

"_The problem is, references to him are short on the ground. This guy, this_ Samael_, he disappeared thousands of years ago, and all knowledge of him just sort of died out. No one was ever quite sure where he went, either."_

"That has to mean that he isn't that dangerous, right? If we haven't heard from him that long?" Jo demanded.

"_Wrong."_ The older man said gravely. _"The fact that he's been missing for all that time means we know next to nothing about him. And if he's coming back, then we don't have any clue of how to fight him." _He didn't sound too thrilled about the prospect.

"So we've got basically bubkiss?" Jo asked wearily, leaning back in the chair she was perched on.

"_Depends on where you dig."_ The hunter said evasively.

"Bobby?"

He took a breath. _"Samael is highly revered as one half of the sacred union of the Church of Satan. In fact, the horned symbol of the Church is the Seal of Samael."_

Jo pulled in a breath. The Church of Satan was basically a religious order for those who believed in things other people didn't, but it still wasn't a good sign. "Who's the other half of the sacred union?" She asked cautiously.

"_Lilith." _He said_. "I've found references to a ritual that will open the door for Samael, using blood and ashes, as apparently _'as Man was created of clay and bone, so Samael is brought about by blood and ashes'_. It can only be used at the anniversary of the demon's banishment, and a sacrifice of comparable power needs to be presented to him so he can consume it and absorb it."_ Bobby continued. _"At the coming of the Black Eden, the sacrifice is said to present itself."_

"Do you have anything else?"

"_Ah… Yes and no."_ Bobby said.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"_Are you a religious person, Jo?"_

That stopped her. "I suppose I've never thought of it." She said with some surprise. "I guess it depends on the season."

"_I've got references from Kabbalah, __The Alpha Betha of Ben Sira, the Bible, all over the world __that mention that there may have been two beings created by God, or whatever He likes to call himself, before Adam and Eve. Sort of like drafts before the final work."_ He said.

"Let me guess. Samael and Lilith." Jo said darkly.

"_The dark doubles of the first humans."_ Bobby said. _"They rebelled against God and the angels before creating their own place among the demons. In time I suppose they _became_ demons."_

"But what happened to make Samael disappear? Did you get any reference to why he wants to come back so bad?"

"_Revenge, most like."_

"What?"

"_It was Lilith."_ Bobby said. _"Lilith was afraid of how powerful Samael was becoming, so she gathered her followers and – well, you can guess the rest."_

"What about the Black Eden? Any theories?"

"_From what I've picked up, this Black Eden that everyone is talking about is a precursor of the coming of Samael."_ Bobby said. _"It's not a demon, or any sort of monster that I can make out. I'm going out on a limb here, but I believe that in the same way that Samael and Lilith are the doppelgangers of Adam and Eve, the Black Eden is the direct opposite of the Garden of Eden."_

"Excuse me?"

"_The Garden of Eden, girl! What was the Garden of Eden?"_ Bobby demanded. Jo swallowed. It had been a long time since she had gone to Sunday school.

"Paradise?" She said uncertainly.

"_Creation."_ Bobby said. _"And the opposite of creation is-"_

There were footsteps outside the door. "I've got to go." Jo whispered hastily.

"_Where are you?" _The older man demanded. _"One of the boys found your car wrecked at the side of the highway. We all thought-"_

"I'm fine. But I can't… tell you where I am." Jo hated it. She hated having to withhold the truth from the people dearest to her. "I just can't."

"_But you're safe?"_

"I'm fine. I sort of ran into these three guys. They don't seem to be demons; actually they're more like the TV evangelists from hell. They asked me to hang around for a while." Jo frowned, feeling squeamish, uncertainty forming a canker in her stomach. "…and I just went with them. Just like that. I don't even know who they are. I don't know - God, what is wrong with me?"

"_The important thing is not to panic."_ Bobby said. _"What you need to do-"_

The door opened and Jo snapped her phone shut. Sariel was standing in the doorway, his tall form blocking the light, his dark glower even more livid than before. He stepped into the room.

"Castiel has an unusual taste in pets." He said. "But this is one mongrel he won't be taking home."


	7. Condemned

Jo jumped to her feet. "Stay away from me, you psycho."

Sariel moved into the room with the measured grace of a hunter that had cornered his prey. "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." He growled.

"Who are you?" She whispered.

"And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." He continued. "Babylon has fallen. The last Seal is breaking and Samael and Lucifer will bathe the earth in blood and fire."

Jo slowly began to inch around the room, looking for an opening in the man's stance. He was insane! Absolutely insane! Babbling on about angels and Babylon and seals and devils. She slowly pulled her little iron knife from her belt and concealed it in her hand. There! A gap. If only he would move a little more to the side…

"Why do you want to kill me?" She asked, her voice not quaking once.

"Because you would warn the one we have come to remove." Sariel replied. "The one Samael would use as a conduit into this world."

"Surely there are lots of people who'd warn this guy." Jo whispered. "I can't be the only - oh, my God." _Sam. _She was the only one who knew where the Winchesters were at this very moment. The only one…

Sariel was stoic. "I must have that information." He said. "And then it must not fall into the hands of any of our enemies."

Jo lunged then, diving for a gap between his body and the door. She brandished her knife and tried to push past him. Her knife chinked against something hard and refused to move. Sariel swung out his leg and Jo hit the floor hard, winded.

She stared up at the man fearfully. Her knife was imbedded in his hand and with a vague look of distaste, Sariel tugged it free and tossed it to her. As she watched, the hole scabbed over and was gone. _What the hell is he? Oh God, what the hell is he?!_ Sariel knelt forward then, and roughly seized her chin. "You will give it to me." He hissed.

Jo screamed.

It was like someone was squeezing her brain and cutting out the pieces he wanted. She saw fragments of her memories floating away from her, and into this unnatural being. He rifled through her treasured moments like someone flicking through a TV guide until he found what he wanted.

Smiling Sam, desperate Sam, pissed Sam. Through Jo's memories, Sariel watched the man grow and change over the years, experienced Sam's power grow, watched his potential increase, all through Jo's eyes.

_So this is the Boy King,_ Sariel remarked in her head. He did not bother to try and hide his disdain.

He was getting closed to finding what he truly wanted. The location. Jo fought against his probing mind, and pushed back.

Sariel seemed surprised when she struck back against him, and his reaction wasn't quick enough. As he had done with her, suddenly Jo was inundated with his memories. She knew without a doubt what he was. Why he was here. Who he was working for.

And it scared her to death.

Regardless of the human woman's efforts to fight back against the inevitable, Sariel ploughed on relentlessly. Sam Winchester, the antichrist. He who had been prepared most of his life to become the sacrifice that would end the world. Images of this man flicked through his mind as he got closer and closer to the location of the gateway.

And then he saw Sam Winchester's brother.

He stopped.

_That's not right,_ he pondered idly.

_He'll kill you, _the child of Adam said fiercely. _If you hurt Sam, he'll find a way to destroy you no matter what it takes._

_We shall see._

And then Sariel released her chin. Jo fell back, staring up at him. Slowly she dragged herself away from him, not taking her eyes from his the whole time. "You bastard." She said. "You freaking bastard. You don't have any idea what you're doing. Who you're dealing with."

Sariel crouched down in front of her. "It is _you _who doesn't know who you are dealing with. I am well aware of who my enemy is, and I will not underestimate him again."

She slowly shook her head. "Please, don't do this. You're an angel; you can't do this. You're an angel."

"We are warriors." He said firmly.

"But I'm innocent."

"Innocent of what?" The angel asked scornfully. "Murder? Lying? Cruelty? The innocent die in war as well as the guilty."

Jo screwed her eyes shut. "Oh, God." She whispered. Only now the words took on an entirely different aspect. He was real. He was out there. He existed. Maybe, maybe this time he would help.

"Humans." Sariel scoffed at her. "You're all alike. Only turning to God when everything else has failed you. Demanding that he save you, as you have so much more to give, you suddenly have found your purpose. We have tried to turn you from this dark path. We tried. But you will walk into the jaws of the beast if the path is paved with gold."

"You prick." Jo hissed. "You abandoned us."

"We abandoned you?" Sariel's expression twisted into that of fury. "We attempted to speak to you, time and time again, but all our messengers ever got was a room in an asylum or a bullet. _You_ were the ones that abandoned _us._"

"What's going on here, then?"

He had a dark suit and dark hair streaked with grey. The demon from the crash.

Sariel slowly stood up, Jo swiftly forgotten. His face was impassive. "What are you doing here?" He snarled.

"I see you managed to talk your way back into the man's good graces." Belial said with a derisive edge, a smug grin playing around the corners of his mouth. "The rules haven't changed. I can still go anywhere you can. Our fates are still entwined."

"What are you doing here?" Sariel demanded once more.

"I don't come to ask you for a fight." The demon replied. "If that's what you're spoiling for, picking on humans because you dare not face your own kind. I have a question for you."

"What question?"

"You saw the brother." Belial said. "And it confused you, even if you would not like to admit it. You saw him go through the gates of Hell yourself, after all. How did he come to be back, alive and well? And so my question is, good angel, do you know what Castiel did when he dined with Lilith?"

"You lie." The angel said softly. "I do not like Castiel, but he would not betray his brothers and sisters by approaching the whore that has already decimated our numbers."

"You're sure? I mean, Castiel seems to be a bit of a loose cannon to me. Doesn't like following orders that much, does he?" Belial grinned. "Ask him. Ask him why he has been leading your search party in circles. Why has he hidden the boy from you?"

Sariel did not speak, uncomprehending. "And once you have your answers, come and find me. First to the finish."

And then the demon was gone. Simply gone, leaving Sariel staring emptily into nothingness. _Run_, a little voice in Jo's ear commanded her. She recognised the voice of Belial, the demon lord. _Run. And remember that this is the second time I have saved your life._

Jo wasn't particularly looking forward to pondering that statement, so she didn't waste a moment longer. She ran. Lately she'd been doing a lot of that.

First to the finish.

_'It's Jo Harvelle. Sam, if you get this message, run. Get the hell out of wherever you are and go to Bobby's. I can't explain it all on the phone, just that there's a demon called Samael who is going to use you as a host so he can come back to this dimension. Dude, give me a call, let me know you're okay.'_

"Bobby, it's Jo again. Yeah, I'm fine. I need a spell. No. I need to hide. I need to hide from an angel. Yes, I'm serious."

* * *

Castiel was unprepared for the intrusion into his solitude by a vengeful Sariel. He titled his head to one side, acknowledging his companion, but gave no further gesture that he even possessed idle curiosity about why his fellow was in such an enraged state. Something in Castiel's peaceful expression told Sariel that he already knew what this was about.

And it infuriated Sariel even more.

I have just had an unusual conversation.

_So I heard. Through the ears of Joanna, the child of Adam, whom you only recently attempted to destroy._

_And you would have let me kill her?_

_I doubt you could have even if you wanted to. Unless you have the anger and the purpose to sharpen your blade, you would rather leave your sword dangle in the dust._

Sariel swore at Castiel in a language that had been extinct on the earth for many a century.

_Why does your heart ache so, friend?_

_You betrayed us. You betrayed us all. Therefore you are no friend of mine. You aided the Demon Queen. You shook her hand and made merry with her while your comrades were dying at the hands of her wraiths. You are a traitor. A traitor and a fool._

_This may be the only way to stop Samael once and for all. Shall we banish him once more and be doomed forever to repeat this frantic race against time?_

How calm Castiel was infuriated Sariel even more.

_You broke a condemned and corrupted man out of a prison that was meant to hold him until the end of eternity._

_I received a higher order. _He replied. _We all deserve the chance at redemption._

_You have had your chance._

That interrupted Castiel's calm revere. _What are you saying? _He demanded coldly.

Sariel did not speak anything further. His eyes sparked with power. Castiel may have been guardian of this day, but he did not posses the want, the anger, the bloodlust. _You are not worthy._

Before Castiel could even think, Sariel had seized a handful of bone and feathers. His fingers dug into muscles and tendons, and Castiel shouted out. _What are you doing?!_

_You have betrayed us all._ Sariel said. _This is vengeance._

And he pulled the wing out of Castiel's back. Ripping his Grace from him.

_This is for our people. _

Castiel made a wild swipe at Sariel, but his fingers passed through that of the urethral being. He was already falling, falling so far. _No. NO!_

_Tell me, when you and Uriel conspired against my sister, did you ever imagine that one day the same fate would come for you? _Sariel was standing there, triumphant. In his hand he held a bright sphere of light. It was painful to look at.

Everything was red, and he hunched over in pain. The world was light and noise, and it was overwhelming. He couldn't open his eyes with Sariel there, for fear of being blinded. Castiel pressed his face to the cold ground.

He could hear the whispers. It was almost like they were taunting him, torturing him. _Listen to them,_ Sariel said. _It is as close as you will ever get to us ever again._

And then he laughed.

After he had finished gloating, Sariel finally left, taking the Grace with him. Castiel stayed, curled up on the floor. Blood was slick on the floorboards and splinters bit into his bare skin. He did not trust himself to move.

At first he did not want to imagine the punishment that Sariel had inflicted on him, but he realised he had to acknowledge his situation if he was going to survive.

And he wasn't damn well going to take it lying down.

Castiel forced himself to his knees, and from there to his feet. There were great twin swipes of white scar tissue down his back, making his whole body stiff and difficult to move. He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and recoiled in horror.

Human. He was human.


	8. At War

Another interesting development in the case of _who whacked the Don? _Dean let the carpet fall back into place and looked up at his brother. "Well?"

"I'd have to cross-reference the symbol, but I'm sure I've seen it before…" Sam frowned, his forehead creased. Dean, still crouched on the floor, scowled at the carpet before looking up at the All Seeing Eye. Someone was playing with the big kids. "I think…" Sam walked in a circle, looking up at the Eye. "Someone is trying to summon a demon."

"Gee whiz, never saw that one coming."

"-And they were trying to use the All Seeing Eye to focus the power here." Sam pointed to the floor.

"The human ashes?"

He shrugged. "No idea." He confessed. "If I didn't know any better I'd say someone was playing tricks."

_Playing tricks-_

Dean shook his head. _I'm getting a weird echo in here. _

"I can't think of any ritual that would call for _two _sacrifices, and if there is ashes involved, it would normally have to be mixed with fresh blood."

_Fresh blood-_

Unconsciously Dean rubbed at his temple. Sam looked over to him curiously. His brother had been acting weirder than usual lately. There was some sort of dark history with Lawson; he woke up in the middle of the night screaming for mercy from invisible assailants, and, worse of all, he refused to tell his brother anything of what was going on.

Sometimes, when Dean looked at him like he was doing right now, Sam wanted to seize him by the shoulders and shake him until the truth came out.

_Maybe he's heading for a breakdown. Maybe _I'm _heading for a breakdown._

There's an optimistic thought for you.

"Y…yeah." Dean cleared his throat. Started again. "It's too cut-and-dried. Like kids bringing out the ouija board at a slumber party."

"What are you thinking?"

Another rub at the forehead, like it was hurting him somehow. "I don't know. Like, maybe someone wanted to lure someone else in to be the sacrifice or something."

"What, a trap? A trap for who?"

Who…

_Kill him. _Dean looked up at Sam. _Kill him, _the voice insisted. _He's right there. Get him. _The whisper seemed to ooze into the corners of his mind, slowly seeping into every crevice. All colour seemed to bleed out of his vision, leaving him looking out at the world like it was a black-and-white television.

"Dean?" His little brother, sounding so far away.

_Stay where you are. _Another voice, with a different authority than the first. No less menacing.

_Kill him!_

_Stay._

_Kill him. I COMMAND IT!_

Spots exploded in front of his eyes, and he rocked back against the wall. "Something's wrong." Dean said. Or maybe he only thought he said it. The room darkened, until the only thing left visible was the All Seeing Eye staring down at him, like a vulture waiting for him to drop dead so it could pick his bones clean.

The last thing Dean saw was the frightened look on Sam's face as his brother lunged across the room to catch him as he fell.

The church was back.

_Great._

Dean looked around his dreamland. Something was wrong. Something was different. The always-present light that had kept the darkness at bay was gone. The nightmare was becoming real.

If it wasn't already.

"Shortbus."

The word was playfully drawn out and almost affectionate. Dean's face twisted into a grimace. "Oh no." He said. "You too?"

"Shocking, huh?" Ruby the Demon stood there in all her glory, the characteristic smirk twisting her lips.

"Why are _you _in my hallucination? I don't even _like _you."

Ruby mimed being shot in the heart, and swooned on the spot. "Ooh, I'm hurt. I'd forgotten how you could sling 'em." She straightened up, hands on her hips. "Pull your head out of your ass for a second, you moron, and you might realise that we're trying to _tell _you something here."

"Tell me what?"

"Uh uh." The demon waggled her finger. "Now that's cheating."

Dean frowned. "At least give me a _hint _of what the hell is going on."

"Well, since you asked so nicely," She examined the fingernails on one hand. "They're all inside your head."

"Who is?"

"Lilith, for one. She's been subconsciously influencing people for years." Ruby replied in an offhand way. "I suspect probably Belial is too, to try and counter Lilith's power. There _was_ someone else." She frowned with distaste. "But he's gone now. Lilith and Belial are pulling faces from your past and future to try and spook you. Condemned souls that you were and are unable to save."

"Then what the hell are you doing here for? You were already screwed when we met."

Ruby laughed. "No, I'm not much of one for the whole subliminal messages thing. I just hitched a ride in here." She looked around herself disdainfully. "Inside. Your head. Probably not the best of ideas as ideas go. Man, you are one _sick _dude."

"What for?"

"To talk. And the only way to get through your thick skull was to… literally go through your thick skull."

"Okay, _ew_ on so many levels." Dean scowled. "You're Sam's demon-on-a-leash. Go bug the crap out of him."

Ruby frowned. "It's too dangerous." She said. "I'd be found out before I could tell anyone anything. I can do a lotta things, but I still have to play by the rules. I ain't that special."

"But I don't get it. Why me?"

Ruby's smile was twisted. "Why, Dean. Haven't you ever wondered? There was only one other man in all history that rose from the grave. In fact, they gave him his own holiday because of it."

"What happened to you, Ruby? You were sort-of on our side once. Whose side are you on now?"

"_My_ side." Ruby said. "I've always been on my side. You got to look out for number one, after all."

"Ruby, just-" Dean stopped himself. If he pissed her off, she'd be even _less _inclined to help him. "Just… tell me what's going on. Please." For a moment he thought she was just going to flip him off again, before she frowned. There was a little horror in her disgusted expression.

"Oh." She said. "You don't know."

"That's _why _I'm asking you what's going on!"

Ruby looked at him. Her old, old eyes burned holes through him. The knowledge and the sadness in them was infinite. "There is a demon." She said. "His name is Samael. He's old. Older than anything else I've ever even heard of. He fought in the War. A war of demons and angels and magic, and then he disappeared. No one ever saw him again. It all happened so long ago that I thought it was a myth."

"Demons have myths?"

"Doesn't everyone?" She replied, without her usual venom. "But now he's coming back, and he's going to take down everyone that betrayed him."

"That's bad? He's doing our job for us."

"This war was against Hell." Ruby said. "And during it, the 66 seals were created. The seals were made to imprison Lucifer until the End of Days."

_The seals._

"What has that got to do with this Samael?"

"Two angels and two demons of extraordinary talents formed a truce to combat Samael. You've probably heard of them. They've gone down in history as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." She said. "But even with their powers combined, they could not defeat him completely. So instead they imprisoned him. They made him the last of the 66 seals to be broken."

"So when he escapes, Lucifer is free?"

"If only." She smiled darkly.

"I don't like that look. That's not a good look." Dean frowned. "What's the deal?"

"Some say that Lucifer was only a figurehead. That the real power lay behind Samael. And when Samael walks free, that's only because he has already killed Lucifer." She said. "Lilith wanted to bring Lucifer back so chaos could reign. She didn't realise until the others were broken that Samael _was_ the last seal and since the enchantments holding him were weakened, he's decided to break out for himself. Looks like she'll be getting more than she bargained for."

"Oh." Dean didn't know what else to say. What else _do_ you say? This bad boy was so nasty he could make the Devil cry. He was going to bump off Satan, then fillet Lilith, presumably go after the Four Horsemen, and then what? What would an all-powerful demon king do next? Hell? Heaven?

"Oh." Ruby agreed. She looked up. Her face was creased in worry. "They've found me. Gotta fly."

"Wait! What has this got to do with my brother?"

Ruby looked at him, deadly serious. "Because he's the wonder boy we've all been waiting for." She said. "Samael knows that. And now the train is pulling into the station."

Dean felt sick. "He's going to… use Sam as a host?"

"Use up his energy so he can reach through to this dimension." Ruby said. "I can't tell Sam that because you know what he gets like when he hears bad news. All filled with angst and crap. I don't think I could bear another talk about his 'evil' destiny."

He knew what she meant. "How do we stop him?"

"I wish I knew." Ruby replied softly, almost gently. "The Four Horsemen and the lords of Hell have been trying to destroy Samael for a millennia, and they still haven't figured out a way. I don't know what the angels have been doing, but if this demon's still walking, it's a safe bet that they never figured anything out either. I'm sorry." She sounded genuinely apologetic. "This time you're both going to get torn apart."

And then Ruby was gone. The church was gone, and Dean was back in the real world, gulping down air like a drowning man.

* * *

Her mother would have derided her for being disgusting, but Jo spat over her shoulder for luck like her father always used to do. She looked across the highway back up at the skeezy motel, hardly believing that she was back here, but she had this overwhelming feeling that there was something left she had to do.

She stuck her hand into her jeans and balled her fist around the mojo bag. It contained her photo, some herbs, a long white feather she'd found on the sidewalk and a few other things. "I hope you're right about this, Bobby." She whispered.

Sariel had decided that the world wasn't worth saving. Castiel saw possibilities that many others of his kind could not or would not see, and Elijah seemed the proverbial fence-sitter. If these were the legendary warriors, those who salvaged people's souls, then the earth was in for a very grave time indeed.

She had seen inside his mind, this Angel Sariel. She saw it and finally understood. Not the meaning of life crap, but other things, more relevant things. But most of all, she now knew the angels mission.

Samael was an ancient evil. He leeched his power from the black rage that lurked in the bottom of the heart of man, and therefore he was always there, omnipresent, waiting. They all thought he had perished years ago.

But now he was coming back. Deadlier than ever. Along with the Black Eden.

The chaos of the storm.

She set one foot into the street and was about to step off the sidewalk when a car rocketed around the corner. Jo stepped back hurriedly to avoid being run down. The driver was leaning out the window, and screamed at her as the vehicle squealed past.

"Remove head from backside and then walk, dumb bitch!"

Jo was too shocked to shout back a witty reply.

People were going nuts all around her.

"It's _mine! _I saw it _first!_"

"Don't you trash-talk _me_, you filthy whore!"

"Get the _hell _away from me before I tear something off you'll need later, you perv!"

"Dear God," Jo whispered, slowly walking in a wide circle. Kids smashed the windows of an electronics store before proceeding to loot the place. Motorists screamed at each other in the street. A Mack truck careened down the road before smashing into the empty school. The man who owned the gun dealership was taking pot-shots at anyone that came too close to his storefront.

It was almost impossible not to get splashed with blood.

And all across town there were people huddled inside their houses, scared for their lives, staring out at the mayhem with terrified eyes. The angel charm that sat heavily in Jo's pocket seemed to have made her invisible to this demonic plague as well as hidden her from the angels.

_Croatoan._

Jo made a wild dash across the road, dodging between out-of control cars and trucks. "Castiel!" She shouted as she knocked back the front door of the motel.

The manager had slit his wrists and was stretched out on the front counter. Jo covered her mouth but didn't stop. She bounded up the stairs, but halfway up something grabbed her foot and brought her crashing down again.

It was a man, his hands cut open and bleeding. Jo recognised him as someone who had been staying at the motel prior to her arrival. His eyes were wide and mad, and he tightly grasped a long shard of jaggared glass. "Join us in Eden," he said, and brought his makeshift knife slashing down.

Jo's foot caught him under the chin and sent him tumbling all the way back down the stairs where he collapsed and was still. "I'm sorry. Jesus, I'm so, so sorry." Filled with remorse and anger and frustration, she continued her frantic climb to the Angel Castiel.

"Cas-" She flung open the door of the room they had been using to retain some semblance of normality and almost promptly fell down. The floor was red and slick and Jo's stomach did another uncomfortable flop.

"Is anyone here?" It was almost a whisper, and she walked further into the room, taking care not to slip on the floor. Surely no one could survive after loosing that much blood, right?

There was heavy breathing coming from the bathroom. Jo slowly pushed open the door.

There was a naked man sitting on the rim on the bathtub, a towel draped around his shoulders. The towel was stained red and he seemed to be in pain, so Jo crept quietly into the room. "Hello." She said cautiously. "Are you alright?"

"Perfectly." He hissed. "It is not as if this doesn't happen to me everyday."

"Okay! Jeez, just seeing if I could do anything."

"Wait, I apologise." He looked up. His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. "Joanna? You appear different somehow." He carefully rose to his feet, his movements slow and deliberate.

The polite and vaguely archaic usage of the English language was familiar. She met his eyes. They were a different colour, a different shape, but right at the bottom she could still see that pure goodness shining like a beacon.

"Castiel? Is that you?" Jo was aghast. "What happened to you?"

The man let the towel slip to bunch around his waist and turned his back on her. Two angry-looking stripes of scar tissue that ran parallel to either side of his spine glared back at her, from his shoulder blades to his hips. Jo was at once filled with wonder and outrage at what must have been ripped from his back to leave those marks.

"I was arrogant." He burst out. "I believed that I might be able to handle Sariel and his outbursts."

"I'm thinking that his outbursts got the better of you?" Jo guessed.

"I had not believed that he had the power to cast me down."

_Oh my God, he's a fallen angel. _"I might look a bit different now you have new eyes."

"Yes, that may be true." He confessed.

"Come on." She said. "We've got work to do." She looked whimsical for a moment. "We'll have to find you some pants first,"

Castiel looked concerned. "We have no hope of defeating Sariel now." Jo ignored the implications in the tone. _Now that I'm a _human _and all._

"It's not Sariel I'm worried about." Jo said. Castiel's eyes grew even more worried.

"Samael?" It was almost amusing, how the words would come out of him all regal and serious the one moment, and then squeaking and high the next. It was like a teenage boy adjusting to puberty. "We will be destroyed!"

"That's the thing about humans." Jo said. "We'll fight the hardest when it looks like we're beat."

"We cannot follow Sariel, but I know where he will be."

"So do I." Jo said dryly. "And we've got to beat him there."

"Castiel?"

"Yes?"

"What happened to you? I mean the other you, what you looked like when you met me."

"His name is Lindsay Weaver, a lawyer from Miami. He offered himself to be used however God saw fit, to salvage his soul from evil. When my awareness was separated from his, he would have been returned to his home and his family, with no memory of his time with me."

"And he could go bad again."

"That is his choice."

"You're all very trusting, aren't you?"

"Except when it comes to our own kind. So many evils of the past have been brought about by our own brothers and sisters that we have learnt to always be suspicious of each other, even more so than of you humans."

"Cas, you're human now, too." Jo said gently. "It isn't 'you' anymore. You're in the 'we'."

He was silent.

The carpark was in chaos. Jo looked around herself, shrugged, and proceeded to break into the nearest car that hadn't been stripped. "Get in." She said to her companion.

As soon as they were away from the craziness of the town, Jo gunned it, hoping to outrun all the madness, leave it all behind her. _Tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and laugh about all this. Laugh. _ Her hands clenched around the steering wheel were starting to shake, and Jo realised that she was beginning to panic.

_I can do this. I can._

Just then she saw the shadow fall over the car, and jerked the wheel to the side.

"Stop!"

Jo stood on the brake, sending the car into a spin that threatened to throw them off the road. Finally they stopped spinning and the car rocked gently to a stop in the gravel. Jo pushed her hair out of her eyes while Castiel gripped the dash grimly, his knuckles white from the strain of holding on and his eyes wide.

"What the hell was that?" Jo unclasped her seatbelt and lent out her door, peering back down the way they had came, looking for the creature that had almost sent them careening to a fiery death.

What she saw astounded her. "Is that idiot riding a horse?" She demanded. There was no answer.

His silence and her own stubbornness meant that it took a moment for Jo to comprehend what she had seen. When she did, her mouth dropped open and she almost fell to her knees in the gravel.

"Oh. Oh my."

The Four Horsemen had come home.

"The End of Days has come." Castiel whispered.


	9. Waking Nightmares, Living Dreams

The hapless Lawson family stood in a huddle in the kitchen as the tow strangers that they had invited into their home drew arcane markings on the floors and walls, and lined the smallest hole or crack with a layer of salt. Reggie Lawson watched the proceedings with narrowed eyes, his cold stare fixed on the back of Dean Winchester. Once again the man threatened to tear apart his family.

Dean, the walking apocalypse.

_This ends here._

"Right." Dean said to the family, his tone implying that he was in charge. "Now you all stay here. Until we come back, _don't leave the house_."

"Cool." Monty's kid said brightly. "I've got a maths test tomorrow. I won't have to study."

"Don't think you're getting off that easily, young man." His mother said firmly.

"Where are you going?" Lawson demanded.

The brothers shared a glance, as if they knew what the other was thinking. Like they shared the same brain.

"We're going back to the base." Sam said. "Whatever's happening has got something to do with the way the Don was found."

"What, all those symbols?"

"Maybe." Sam hedged carefully. This Lawson was shrewd. He knew that something was happening that he probably wouldn't like very much. "But we _really _need you to stay put, okay? You'll be safe."

The other man's eyes narrowed, but he didn't reply.

Dean glanced back at the bewildered family, at the man that used to be his friend. "I'm sorry, man." He said, and his voice was thick with an emotion that Sam didn't often hear. His brother was genuinely apologetic. "I'm sorry about everything."

"So am I." Lawson said, his voice cold and strangely hollow-sounding. Dean flinched like he had been pricked with something sharp, before hustling Sam out the door to the Impala.

The car was momentarily caught up in traffic when Sam spoke.

"Are you going to tell me now?"

"Tell you what?" Dean looked at his brother sidelong.

"Whatever history's between you and Lawson that makes you become Mr Antisocial whenever you're put in a room with him for too long." Sam said. "You used to be best friends, until he just stopped hanging around with you."

"Used to be." His brother said faintly, as the Impala crept forward. Sam could tell that Dean was itching to slam his foot on the accelerator to avoid this moment altogether.

"Dean!"

"Alright!" He snapped back. "Dad shot his mom, alright?!"

Sam shot up in the passenger's seat, deadly straight. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." Dean said grimly. "I'd just turned sixteen, and Dad took me out on a hunt."

"I remember." He remembered sitting in the car the whole time and when Dead and Dad got back, their father was more morose than ever, and his normally unflappable brother was so distressed that even Sam's special brand of wheedling couldn't get anything out of him. "I remember that you and Dad wouldn't even look at each other until we were in the next state."

Dean nodded slowly, eyes still on the road in front of them and the structure of the base looming up at them from the ground like some sort of monster. "Dad had been on the trail of something burning the eyes out of its victim's heads." He said. "All the victims were teachers at this one school, and Lawson's mom was the school principal and had access to all these different things…" He trailed off.

"We followed her one night, and that was when she – changed."

Realisation slapped Sam across the face.

"Lawson's mother was a _shape shifter_?"

Another slow nod. "So he shot her." Dean said simply. "After, Dad broke into her office and stole a bunch of stuff out of her desk. It was only later – to late – when we realised that she was also investigating the deaths, 'cause she felt responsible since she was the school caretaker and crap. She was shifting and going undercover to – to find the person responsible."

"Dean, you're weaving a little to the middle of the road." Sam said gently. "It wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was. I saw her face. I recognised her. I could have got Dad to stop."

"You and I both know that once Dad got something into his head, there was no convincing him otherwise." Sam said sternly. "Did you get the one that was killing those people?"

"Dad found the clues in Mrs Lawson's notes and nailed him to the wall."

"How did Lawson find out?"

Dean shrugged. "I never bothered to ask."

Sam followed Dean into the enclosure, walking around the building and mingling with other recruits until they were out of sight.

"I've got to take a leak." Dean announced suddenly, when they were almost at the building in question.

"D_-ean_!" Sam protested. "If what Ruby said is true, we don't have _time_!"

"The apocalypse has waited this long. It can wait a little longer."

Sam reluctantly followed his brother into the deserted cafeteria. "Sam?" Dean asked.

"Yeah?"

Dean's eyes were shadowed as he turned to look at him. "I'm sorry." He said, and he felled his brother with a blow to the head. Sam fell limp. The guilt inside threatened to eat him up, but Dean managed to get a firm hold on his emotions and grabbed his brother under the arms and dragged him along the corridor to a supply cupboard. Moving the dead weight was quite a workout.

"Sorry, little brother. You'll thank me later."

"What the hell are you doing?"

Dean looked up. Lawson was standing in the cafeteria doorway, shock on his face. "Oh, hey. Give me a hand with this, will ya?"

Dumbly, Lawson did as he was bid and in a matter of minutes the two men had locked the larger Sam in the store cupboard. Lawson turned to Dean.

"Are you _completely _out of your tree?" He demanded.

"Most likely." Dean said dryly. "What about you? I told you to stay put."

Lawson's lip curled. "My wife and son are home, waiting for me to come back. We can't live like prisoners, Dean."

"You could get hurt. I don't want that."

"And I don't care. What if you can't do what you're trying to do? What does that mean for us then?"

Dan was silent.

"Do you even _know _what you're supposed to do?"

"I'm working on it, okay?" Dean sharply motioned Lawson to follow him, and the two proceeded to go to the Don's office, the place the poor man had been slaughtered for some demented ritual to bring back the bad of the bad, Samael.

Lawson reached the door first. There was surprise on his face and he was clearly wondering where the investigators had gone to, but when he pushed into the room, it was horrifically clear what the NCIS team's fate had been.

One wall was painted a dark red, and there by the door were the remains of the two agents who had remained at the crime scene. Dean swallowed as he looked at what remained. One corpse had been reduced to a dark ash through some intense heat, and deep gashes stared back at him from the second, where some wild beast had bitten down hard and twisted until flesh peeled clear away. Sickened, he looked away from the remains.

"Hell hounds and hellfire." He growled low in his throat. "It's happening. There must be something to stop it. Some ritual to use." Dean ran his fingers through his hair, wondering for a moment whether he had done the right thing, knocking Sam out. Yes, he decided, if Samael wanted Sam as a host, it was best that he wasn't here.

"Ritual?" Lawson sounded pissed. Beyond pissed, he was _upset._ "That's what's left of two people I've known for the last _ten years_! And you're worried about a ritual?"

"If I don't stop this, we'll all be dead." Dean snapped.

"And if you do stop this? Are you going to tell the families of the dead what happened?" Lawson challenged. At Dean's expression, he finished the question himself. "No, I didn't think so. That's why your family is always moving on to the next town, isn't it? So you won't have to deal with the consequences!"

Dean and Lawson, once childhood friends, stared at each other coldly, both refusing to back down. "I'm sorry." Dean said once again.

"You are not."

Dean turned away, frustrated. He'd never actually saved the world before, so this was all rather new to him. _Dad, help me._ He took a deep breath. "Can you hear that?" He asked, before the door was flung open once more and he and Lawson were staring face to face with the newcomers.

The man Dean didn't recognise at first, but the little blonde with her mussed hair and sharp eyes was terribly familiar.

"You're still alive!" Jo Harvelle sounded overjoyed, and before Dean really registered her appearance, she had flung her arms around Dean's neck and pulled him into a bone-cracking hug.

"Last time I looked, but you can never really tell these days." He said. "Jo."

"Yeah?"

"How the _hell _did you find me?"

She smiled brightly. "You should turn off your cell phone if you don't want to be traced."

Dean blinked. "You devious little witch."

"Thank you." The blonde turned, and offered her hand to Lawson. "Hi, I'm Jo, and this is Castiel. Jeez it's good to see you still alive, and where is-? There's this badass demon after you, wants to tear through to – and where is-?"

"How much caffeine have you consumed in the last twenty-four hours?" Dean asked curiously. "You're like the Energiser Bunny on a sugar high."

With some effort, Jo attempted to amp down. "This is Lawson." Dean said. "He's my normal friend."

"You have normal friends?"

"It has been known to happen."

"Excuse me." The rather nondescript man Jo was with interrupted. "While you both are chatting about how your day has been, the greatest evil any of us has ever seen is about to be birthed into this world to destroy the very fabric of this dimension as we know it."

"Do you want to repeat that? I kind of wandered into the middle there." Lawson's expression was torn between disbelief and amusement. He looked at the third man, and as soon as their eyes met, he looked down at the ground.

Castiel looked at Lawson for a long moment, thinking that he just saw something creeping below the surface. A flash of a face underneath the face. And then the moment passed and the human was human once more.

"Castiel." Dean looked up. His face was solemn. "I got your message. The one in my dreams."

The man looked up. His eyes narrowed slightly, but otherwise he gave no further clue that he knew what Dean was talking about. "And?" He said quietly.

"I know what to do." This time there was a tremor of fear in his voice, and Jo looked up at his face sharply. What she saw there shocked her. Dean Winchester was scared. "Tell me what to do."

Grimly, Castiel nodded.

"What are you going on about?" Lawson still had no clue what was happening. It was like he had been pushed on stage without knowing his lines, or even what the play was about.

"Dean, what's happening?" Jo repeated urgently.

Dean looked down at her. Dirt was streaked across her face, and blood. "I guess I owe you an explanation."

"And a lot more in between."

"For the past while," He said. "I've been having these – nightmares. I've seen the people I care about die, or become something that…"

"Dean?"

"Two demons were trying to make me do things. One of them wanted me to kill Sam, and the other wanted him left alive." Dean said bluntly. "Neither of them could possess me, so they got into my dreams. And _he_ was there too. I… kept dying, and each time I saw Sam, and he asked me why I didn't stop it." He glanced at Castiel. "Which was _his _message."

"Which was what?"

Dean looked at her levelly, his eyes calm. "Castiel showed me that I could take Sam's place as Samael's host."

"_What_?"

"Jo, it makes sense. Sam's got the skinny on all these weird extracurricular supernatural abilities, and if this king demon or whatever he is gets Sam's body-"

"He will become invincible." Castiel finished.

"Good plan, up to the point where you get your ass killed." Jo said coolly. "So all this-" She glared accusingly at Castiel. "All your holier-than-thou companions, stopping to save me, and all the times I could have been killed watching you, this was all about getting Dean to the right spot so he could _die_?"

"No." Castiel said. "This was about getting _you_ to the right spot so Dean could die."

Understanding, Dean reached into a pocket in his jacket and slowly pulled something out. It was the wickedly curving knife that used to belong to the demon Ruby. He took a deep breath. "You're the only one I can really trust here, even after how I treated you." He said. "Sam would never, and having him this close is dangerous anyway. I want you to do it." He offered her the knife.

"No."

"Don't you see? Sam's the chosen one, or whatever. I'm just… some guy. If he gets put in _me_, there's still a chace you can kill him." Dean's eyes bored into her. "I know you liked me once, and I'm begging you. If you feel anything for me at all now, you _will _kill this demon."

His voice was the bleakest and most solemn that Jo had ever heard coming from him. Reluctantly she reached for the blade, her hands brushing against his as he surrendered the knife to her. "You were never just some guy to me." She said quietly.

Dean very nearly backed out then. He tore his eyes from Jo and focused on the strange, urethral Castiel.

"Tell me how to summon Samael."

Castiel closed his eyes and bowed his head. "As you wish."

Dean laughed grimly. "You know I don't have a choice."

Castiel directed him to stand at the centre of the Seal, the All Seeing Eye looking down on him sombrely, waiting to funnel the entirety of its power through him, through his body.

The thought was terrifying.

"You're doing the right thing." Lawson said softly to Jo.

Jo Harvelle looked at him, and the slightly feral glint in her eyes was not that dissimilar the wild edge in Dean and Sam Winchester. "Maybe." She said flatly. "But I still feel like I'm about to take part in a murder."

"What now?" Dean stared back at Castiel, who still had his eyes closed.

"I can hear them." The fallen angel spoke softly. "The time of ascension swiftly approaches. My brothers move to head off Samael the moment he escapes the Final Seal. We must snatch his essence away from the Warriors of God the moment the demon steps forth, or your brother will be eternally damned and this world will be plunged into war of the kind it has not seen for a millennia."

"Will it work?"

"The demon's only choice would be to face my brothers while he is still little more than a thought form. He will come."

"Let's do it, then!"

"We must wait."

It seemed like hours, but when Jo looked at her watch, only a few minutes had passed. Then Castiel began to speak.

Dean looked up. The language was not Latin, or any other language he could identify or had heard before. He could tell immediately that it must have been a long-forgotten dialect, as literally only God knew how old Castiel was. The voice was smooth and hypnotic, and although Dean was still aware of all that was going on about him, he felt himself slipping into a trance. The room slowly faded out, as did the faces of Jo and Lawson, until the only thing in the dark was Castiel's voice.

And as Dean tuned into another form of awareness, the angel's words became clear.

"_Behold the evil I see painted in my own reflection_

_The shadows of the dark places_

_Harken, lord of doom, master of death's dominion_

_As the Eternal Fool sprung from the clay and bone of the Great Enemy_

_I bid thee_

_Rise anew from the blood and ashes of this world_

_Samael, I summon you forth."_


	10. Neverending Story

Jo watched with her heart in her throat as the fallen angel continued to speak. Slowly she tuned out his voice until the foreign words were just another background noise and all her concentration had focused on the task at hand. The arcane blade was heavy in her hand, and she adjusted her grip until it felt good resting in her palm. Two steps to the circle, another step to Dean, and then it was simply a matter of raising her hand and plunging the knife through his heart.

Jo Harvelle's inner stillness and Castiel's preoccupation with reciting the incantation perfectly meant that both of them missed the change in Lawson's face, the self-confident smirk and smug twinkle in his eyes that for a moment transformed him into someone else entirely.

_It's almost there._

Even later Dean would never quite remember clearly what happened next. His soul, or whatever else you want to call it, was suspended in some limbo world somewhere between life and death. Castiel's voice was like a lifeline in the dark, which he clung to like a drowning man.

Then there was a moment of stillness and the shining rope quite inexplicitly snapped, sending him spiraling into nowhere.

Falling.

He was burning, being ripped apart all over again. The dark shadow was descending over him, over the world, and there was nothing he could do. Dean could feel his very awareness being pried off his own body as whatever the presence was set up shop in his head, and Dean was relegated to the vaults of someone else's immensely powerful mind.

"_Hello, smalling."_ The dirty stain on his awareness spoke. Dean though he could see eyes gleaming at him from out of the darkness. And then the presence swept by him, opening a thousand horrific images in his mind, enough to break the strongest minds ever seen.

But Dean had already broken once, and he was determined not to do it again.

"_How interesting."_

This creature was greater than any demon ever before. He was to demonkind what humans were to ants. He'd destroyed warlords and vast armies with hardly a flick of his wrist.

Samael had escaped the last Seal.

Lucifer was dead.

And the thought was absolutely terrifying.

The demon flexed his new muscles, and looked down at his calloused hands. His face twitched into a smirk.

_My smirk._

"And it's _good _to be back!"

* * *

"_Fool!"_

There was a scream as Castiel completed the incantation.

A painfully bright light exploded into the room, and for a moment Jo wondered who had dropped the bomb, but when she managed to open her watering eyes, it became clear. The Angel Sariel stood there, his face like God's judgment itself. Castiel was frozen in his wake, from fear or shock, it was unclear.

Then everything happened at once.

Elijah restrained Sariel from striking down Castiel, the office door burst inwards in a shower of splinters to show the demon Belial standing there flanked by his henchmen, something in Dean perceptively shifted, and the presence inside him flung out an arm sending Jo and Lawson hurtling back against the wall.

The knife was dropped.

Then Samael spoke, and everyone was silent, frozen in a bizarre montage of angel and demon and those creatures between. Waiting, as Samael inspected his new body.

"Could be worse." He said to himself. "A little frayed around the edges and a bit more mileage than I would have liked, but all in all, not bad." He looked up at them, peering at each face in turn. "My, my. Look at how many have come over for my birthday."

Sariel was the first to speak. "Begone from here, demon."

"Or you'll do what?" Samael raised an eyebrow, and amused look on his face. This was all a big game to him.

Jo was suddenly aware of another presence in the room, and she glanced back. Sam Winchester was in the room, and had managed to circle around Belial's demons without being seen. He was now inching toward the demon-killing knife.

But Samael wasn't as unobservant as all the others. "Get up." He demanded, and some sort of invisible force reached out and grasped Sam around the torso and tossed him against the wall.

"The Boy King." The demon stepped forward to inspect the human. Sam stared back defiantly. "Now reduced to no more than a pawn in this game of Gods and Devils. Azazel, Samhain, you've fought and won against some powerful foes, boy, but you haven't seen anything like me."

The very core of evil emanating from the demon almost made Sam physically sick. "But when I rebuild my Black Eden, my dark paradise-" Samael cocked his head to the side. "I will still need my disciples."

Sam bared his teeth in a snarl of defiance. "I would never join you!"

"And it will not be permitted." Sariel said. "You will not be permitted to go forth from this place."

"And how do you think to restrain me, host of hosts?" Samael asked in his sneering way, spreading his arms wide. "When it was you that allowed me to live to begin with?"

The angel had gone completely white. Castiel stared at his ex-comrade with horror.

"_You're _the traitor!" He gasped.

"Yes." Samael said. "The seraph gifted with the somewhat dubious honour of deciding the fate of his heavenly companions that stray from the path of the good and the righteous. Tell me now, God's puppet, did you make the right choice all those millennia ago? I was the first to draw blood on this earth, and I will be the last. And _none _of you have the power to stop me!"

The demon Belial's face was twisted into an expression of utmost fury. Sariel's face was hard and cold and Elijah still stood like he was merely an observer to the events taking place.

"You are a fool, Samael." Elijah spoke into the void.

The room held its breath.

"What did you say to me?" Samael demanded.

"You are a fool." The soft-spoken Elijah repeated, a hint of steel to his words.

"Oh? Indeed!"

"Look around you, Samael. We are ghosts, gone from this place forevermore; this brave new world where demons save the lives of the innocent and angels commit genocide. The line between us that was once so clear has blurred beyond all recognition. This world has moved on for us, and our age has passed."

"Then it is time for a new age to begin!" Samael roared.

"Oh, indeed?" There was distaste in Elijah's eyes, distaste but no hate.

It was then that a young female voice piped up from the crush.

"He speaks truly."

All eyes settled on the young girl as Mary Morgan casually walked toward the centre of the room, but even more shocking than the sudden appearance of Lilith was Samael's reaction to the demoness. He rocked back and bared his teeth as he was about to strike out. "Get back, wretch!"

Sam thought he heard raw pain in the demon's voice.

"This world was once made for us." Lilith said. The childish edge had dropped from her tone and the voice she used was solemn, with the weight of the years behind her. "But now this world has left us behind. We are all dead to these people."

"Then I will remind them of what they should fear." Samael growled. "Lilith, do not think to lecture me on what I do. In my time away I did hear about your escapades at world domination. Do as I say and not as I do, I would say."

Belial audibly groaned. "Please take the domestic outside,"

Luckily for him both Samael and Lilith ignored him.

"Thousands of years we have been two sides of the same coin."

"You abandoned me! Sent me away!" There was pure anguish in Samael's voice. "Now this place will be as ashes and good and evil will rise to do battle on the bones of their comrades! All worlds will run with blood!"

"No you will not." Lilith said in an icy tone. Her eyes sparkled with power. "I will drag you screaming into the abyss before I allow you to destroy both our people,"

"We shall see," Samael snarled, before the host dropped to his knees, dark, withering smoke billowing out his mouth. Dean fell forward onto his hands, coughing and spluttering. There was fury in Lilith's eyes. And something else.

"I have loved you forever." Lilith said, and the demon erupted out of the body of the young girl, billowing and undulating before launching herself at Samael, wrapping her insubstantial form tightly around him. The demon himself struck back, struggling against her, the air hot with his fury.

For a moment longer the two were locked together, and then the demons ignited into flame, burning away into nothingness. When Sam looked back to earth, Sariel, Elijah and the host of demons were gone. They had seen what they needed to see, and had vanished back to wherever they had come from.

Dean slowly sat up, head in his hands. "Man," He blinked and looked up blearily, his eyes unfocused. "I haven't been on a trip like that since high school."

As soon as Sam assessed that Dean was more or less in one piece, he followed through with a solid punch to the jaw. His brother reeled back, a look of hurt surprise on his face.

"You do that to me again," Sam practically shouted. "And I'll kill you myself."

Belial the demon was still in the room, leaning casually against the ruined doorframe.

"Now that was ever so exciting, wasn't it, kiddies?" He brushed some white ash from his fine dark suit. "And in one fell swoop, Lilith, Samael, and Lucifer are yesterday's news. No celebratory drinks? No _ding dong the witch is dead_? It would make sense," He said reflectively. "If you took a breather before the next apocalypse."

"What?" Dean said wearily. "What are you talking about? Lucifer is dead, and-"

"You kids _don't know_?" And the demon laughed.

"The _genuine _Lucifer, the _real deal_, he's been dead for eons now. He was destroyed before humans even came to walk upon this earth."

Sam went cold. "What?"

"Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, whatever you want to say. It's not a name. It's a _job title_." Belial grinned. "And now the next qualified is up for the mother of all promotions. You boys, you're gonna be fighting the Devil until the day you die."

He sounded delighted. Too gleeful.

"And I suppose you're the next in the food chain, huh?" Dean snarled.

Belial spread his arms wide. "And as a gesture of my good faith on this wondrous day, I won't kill you yet."

"You owe us." Sam said. "You wouldn't be the top of the pile if it weren't for us. And you expect us to take you for your word that you wont kill all of us as soon as we walk out of this building?"

"So you want me to call off the whole war instead? No can do, Sammy. My people like themselves a good bloodbath."

"No." Sam said. "I want you to leave that man's body. Let him die with some measure of dignity." Dean shot him a _what-the-hell-are-you-doing _look, but his brother held up a hand in a gesture to stay quiet.

"Sammy Sam Sam, you're getting sentimental in your old age."

"We'll call it even and start again tomorrow." Sam said challengingly.

"You would trade a favour from a demon lord for the death of an old man?" Belial asked incredulously.

"Yeah, Sam, you'd do that?" Dean asked sharply.

"This is important, Dean." His little brother said. "I know this guy. So do you."

"Do I? No I don't."

"Deal." The demon said. "See you crazy kids around some time."

And he left, leaving his host lying on the floor. Sam stood unmoving as Jo knelt down and felt for a pulse and mentally appraised his wounds. Sam didn't know what to do, and the steely way Dean was staring at him wasn't helping.

"He's dying." Jo said gravely. "Whatever you want to say, you better do it now." She moved aside as Dean knelt down beside her curiously. Something was tickling at the back of his memory, from a time before the fire, a time when he was just a little boy who would have run away from the creatures lurking in the night. "Hey," He said. "Do you remember who you are?"

There was blood on the man's lips and his eyes were mostly closed, so Dean couldn't be sure that he had heard, until broken words rasped out of the damaged body.

"Ahn…" The man tried to get his mouth around the word, unsure of how to speak after all his years as a demon's host. "An-drew. Drew Wh… Winchester." Then he opened his eyes to look at those gathered around him, and Dean finally noticed the resemblance to the late John Winchester. The old man grasped both Sam and Dean by the collars, drawing them down. His words threatened to fall apart, causing the brothers to come closer to catch them. "I've… wanted to see… Look at how you've grown. My… little brother's boys."

"Hi, Uncle Drew." Sam said, while Dean seemed to be in a state of delayed shock. There were footsteps behind them and Lawson and Castiel were there, each holding a hand of the young girl that had up until recently been the host of Lilith.

"John?" Drew wheezed, and both Winchester brothers heard the pain and desperation in that one-word question.

"He's a good man. You'd be proud of him." Dean said solemnly, one older brother to another. He pulled in a breath, and exhaled it slowly. "Are there any others?" He asked Drew in an urgent whisper, trying and failing to keep the hopeful spark from his voice. "Are there any other Winchesters?"

The man's eyes were clouding over. "No." He whispered. "My boys… my little girl. My wife. All of them were stolen from me forever."

With some effort, he reached into a pocket and pulled something out. A heart-shaped pendant bounced to the floor. Dean carefully picked it up and peered at the half of the inscription. _I will fear. _Strange message for a piece of girly jewelry.

The eyes of the young Mary Morgan were wide.

"My wife's. _He _let me keep it, hoped… it would help drive me mad."

The girl took something from around her own neck and reached forward to tug the pendant from Dean's unresponsive hand. Small hands shaking, she fit her half of the pendant with Drew's.

_I will fear no evil._

"Where did you get that?" Sam asked.

"It belonged to my birth mother." She said.

The old man was drifting away, but he saw the girl.

"My name's Mary."

"A good, strong name." Drew said, and closed his eyes.

"Yes it is." Dean agreed softly.

"Grandfather," Mary whispered. She took one of his hands, Dean took the other, and Sam looked on as the man none of them knew but was still part of them died.

* * *

Sam and Dean, along with a guard of Jo, Mary and Castiel, cremated Drew's body, and they took him back home.

Back to Kansas.

There they found the graves of Allison Winchester, along with those of her two young sons Cameron and Jack, and Mary's mother Annie. It was a hurtful irony to discover that for years the rest of the family had lain only two rows away from the resting place of Mary Winchester.

Mary Morgan clung to Dean's hand like she would never let go.

Sam and Jo put the disappearance of Ruby's knife down to one of Belial's minions, who had judged the weapon too powerful to remain in human hands. No one even stopped to consider that it may have walked out of the building under the jacket of Dean's old friend, Lawson.

Sam's dreams were just as vivid as before, only now they commonly featured a faceless monster gravely informing him that he would be fighting the Devil until the day he died. Dean was happy to report that he was once again vision-free, and his most disturbing dream was one of Bobby telling them that there was an evil leprechaun haunting Mardi Gras and Dean and his brother had to go undercover as strippers at a gay bar.

There was not a day Castiel didn't think about his divinity lost, and he continually pondered questing forth to rediscover his grace. He still heard the angels speaking in his mind, and from that he discovered that Sariel had vanished and Uriel had been appointed to hunt him down and bring him back. Castiel felt no empathy. In time the fallen angel was also accepted into the expanding menagerie that was Harvelle's Bar, a place where outcasts came together in unity.

The explanations the governing bodies thought up to cover the last few days of insanity were laughable, and for a while there Dean was collecting newspaper cut-outs of the most outlandish stories and pinning them to the notice board of the Bar. But before the brothers could leave on the next hunt, there was one last thing to do.

Somehow Jo Harvelle had managed to wrangle a marriage proposal from her older barman/hunter boyfriend, and she invited the Winchesters to the wedding herself, stopping just short of saying _or else_ when she said she hoped they could stick around for it. Ellen, the Harvelle family matriarch, didn't say a word. Sam and Dean's undeniable presence in her daughter's life was now her husband's problem.

It seemed right to be married in Pastor Jim's old church by a friend of her father's. Jo and AJ said 'I do' in the company of Ellen Harvelle, Bobby Singer, Castiel, Jo's friends Deacon Ridgeway, Gabriel Forsyth & Carmen Diego, Ellen's pal and voodoo expert Ruben, the kid that had been saved from his doppelganger Harry Colt, young Mary Morgan who had seen too much to be surprised anymore, and of course, the Winchesters.

And then it was back to the Bar.

All in all, it wasn't a very conventional wedding. Almost all the guests looked like they'd walked out of a _Lumberjack Monthly _magazine in their flannels and denim, the groom wore an ACDC concert tee underneath his tuxedo jacket, and the bride wore a pretty embroidered satin shirt, had coifed her blonde hair into insensibility, but completed the ensemble with tight leather pants and stiletto boots.

Bobby toasted the couple in the place of the late Bill Harvelle.

"May they live long enough to be a problem to their grandchildren,"

There was uproarious laughter and thunderous applause, but Sam knew there was real meaning behind the words. AJ and Jo were hunters. Subtext: Stay alive. Don't get killed. Give your kids a life and make sure they have somewhere to run to.

Sam was sitting in the corner nursing a beer when his brother decided to grace him with his presence. "Whet the hell are you doing over here, Sammy? Get up and have some fun. Congratulate the bride and groom. Dance with a bridesmaid."

"I'm thinking." Sam replied. "You should try it. Especially when we need to explain Mary's absence to her adoptive family."

At the very mention of the girl, Dean's face tightened into a stubborn expression and his eyes flashed defiantly.

"You can't _keep_ her, Dean!" Sam exploded. "She's a kid, not a pet!"

"She's family."

"Which means we should consider her situation even more carefully than we would otherwise. As family, do we have the right to expose her to all the things that have damaged us? We have a moral and ethical responsibility to keep Mary safe."

Dean slowly considered it.

"If it's any consolation, I think we've probably imprinted our images on the back of her retinas." Sam said. "Did we do the right thing?"

"About what?"

"The demon."

"You're asking yourself this _now_?"

"You heard what he said. There hasn't been a real Devil for years, and anyone else called that have been… promoted."

"So?"

"So did we do right? Letting Belial go, did we put someone even worse in Lucifer's place?"

The two were silent, creating a depressed bubble on the edge of the frivolity.

"Way to rain on the parade, Sammy."

"You don't like parades anyway."

"I suppose." Dean said. "I suppose we'll just have to meet what's coming when it gets here."

* * *

It was raining. Lawson's hair was slicked back from his forehead as the water trickled down his face and into this shirt. He kept walking forward, eyes on the darkening horizon before him. He was heading to a house, a house that had one light burning in the window.

He did not knock.

"My lord Belial." Lawson inclined his head slightly, but kept his eyes fixed firmly on the person before him. Belial had chosen a handsome young man as his new host, and Lawson found himself staring into the face of someone a good ten years younger, but with a hundred lifetimes of knowledge and darkness emanating from his heady stare.

"I did not think you would come back." Belial said in an offhand manner, two minions in the background creeping closer to their master. "I did not think you would have the courage after being branded a traitor."

"Yet it was you who allowed the Winchesters to survive. That's treason." Lawson said. "A new dawn emerges. I wish to be part of that."

Belial stepped forward and peered into Lawson's eyes. "You're lying."

"No I'm not." Lawson said calmly. "I _am _the new dawn." And from his jacket he produced the demon-killing knife. Belial had enough time to register shock on his face before Lawson drew back his fist and slashed the demon once, just once, right across his throat.

The creature inside the human convulsed even as the host died immediately. Belial attempted to reach out to Lawson in smoky tendrils, but the demon withered away into nothingness before his minions had even crossed the floor halfway. Lawson spun, brandishing the knife before him. "Back." He commanded Belial's demons. "Stay away unless you want to suffer the same fate."

"What do you want?" One hissed, his eyes black.

"Inform the rest of our people that Lord Belial, our Lucifer is dead." Lawson said coldly. "And a new order has begun."

"What name will we give when others ask of it?" Another asked.

Lawson smiled.

"Tell them that Ruby's home."

* * *

**Disclaimer:** I've been away from this story for a while, as I've been working on_ The Adventures of Goldie Locks _and _The Mary Sue Strikes Back_ ***shameless plug*** Sorry for the wait. If you want background info on Drew and Mary, best look at my other fics _Christmas _or_ Soothsayer, _for AJ's story, see _Perfect _and _Hellbound_

Anyways, Supernatural belongs to Kripke and the CW and all that.

I own: Drew, Mary, Lawson, Monty, The Don, AJ, Assorted Demons, Random Dead Guys, Token Pretty Girls, Nameless Original Characters Used To Fill Up Space, Extras There To Make The Leads Look Good…

It can be argued that Castiel, Sariel, Elijah, Belial, Lilith and Samael belong to themselves.

**AN:** For those who may be interested-

**Samael:** The face of a goat in an upside down pentagram is the Seal of Samael, which the Church of Satan really _does _use (um, yeah) to invoke the darker powers. Samael and Lilith are the two main deities in the church, and apparently the two were the equivalent of 'married'. In the Book of Enoch, Samael is listed as an archangel and one of the first fallen angels. In the Alpha Betha of Ben Sira, he's known as the 'Great Demon'.

**Sariel:** His role is to decide the fate of angels that stray from God's path. He is said to be an angel of knowledge. He's also been called a rebel angel, though he hasn't actually fallen yet.

**Elijah:** The Angel of Innocence. In Jewish tradition, he protects newborn children.

**Belial:** In the Goetia, he's the demon of lies and guilt. He's a prince/king of Hell, and has been associated with Lucifer and Samael.

**Lilith:** _The_ demon queen who is the mother of all evil and has defied God. All through history there have been similar female figures that have been linked together as Lilith.

**Castiel:** If you don't know already, he's the Angel of Thursday.


End file.
